My Gift

Here it is her birthday, the queen of our tiny, backwards Christian school's sixth grade class. We must bear gifts.

I love our queen, god bless her, and consider myself honored to be her side kick. She is flashy and brilliant and shiny and feisty and fun, unless she isn't. It didn't seem a big deal, the way she'd make fun of every thing I wore, every single day. At home my mother would be scolding me to not be so picky, "Life is NOT a fashion show." Except in Naomi's class it is, absolutely. But at least she isn't boring.

Power

She is THE class artist, she declares, and we all know it's true. Her parents buy private art lessons for her while the rest of us muddle through Ms. Reinstra's painful, exacting, occasional drawing classes. Naomi is very clear that her work is the best, always, no exceptions. She laughs, "Remember in third grade when you all drew jack-o-lanterns with straight vertical stripes! Haha! So stupid! I was the ONLY one to draw them curved, with PERSPECTIVE." (This turns out to not be true. Much later, sorting though the piles of school papers my mother saved by the ton, I'd spot mine. The lines were not artlessly vertical.) This legend is true to Naomi and that's all that matters in our class.  The class is so small, no one can hide from her narratives.

At home, I am "the artist," although later I will not appreciate this old fashioned sorting and labeling of children. It's possible we were all good artists. But it was the one thing I am recognized as at home. I am not allowed to be that at school. At school I am just "the."

We are both young for the grade. I've turned 11 and now it is her turn. November. My mother told me there is no money to buy her a gift. Perhaps we try, but nothing in our price range is good enough for the queen of 6th grade.

"You'll just have to make her something. Draw her something! You're good at that."

Incredulous gawking.

"You'll have to think of something else then."

She tells me that home made gifts are the best anyway.

The other thing I do, always, is write. I will write for her.This gift is of the heart.

At 7, I'd asked my dad where the stories he read to us came from. He'd said "Out of the writer's imaginations."

"So, it's someone's job to make up stories and write them?!!"

"I guess. Yes."

I was electrified. THAT is what I would do. ONLY THAT.

The next day, driving through Eastsound, Orcas Island on our way to "our" summer cabin (a place rented out to pastor's families for nearly nothing, a perk of ministry) my father parked the sedan at Darvill's Bookstore. If I am going to write, I need to start practicing now, he advised. He bought me a journal then. I pick out a tiny, child-sized thing covered in tiny burgundy flowers and a Bible verse. And I was off, utterly certain of my path. My daily entries throughout vacation were shocking revelations of monotony: played legos, played on beeech, ate macaroni, plaiyed on beech, did puzzle, et dinner. In these simple statements, I felt there was a secret that would be revealed to me with time. And later, I filled it with the plans I had: work at Cookie Cafe (did it!), join Navy, marry Miles.

I moved on to larger spiral bound notebooks and a horse-covered trapper-keeper. I filled these with  novels and short stories and poetry. I hated reading, (until 7th grade, at which point I burst forth like a stop-motion flower, consuming the works of Shakespeare, the journals of Christopher Columbus, a tome of Naval stories, and every single thing by L.M. Montgomery) but I always loved writing. And I wrote prolifically and spontaneously and constantly, a volume which sprung straight from the artesian well of certainty within. I believed I had a gift and my job was to give it.

So, I write for our queen a novella. At first my gut instincts balk, but as I begin writing, the narrative carries me off and I begin to believe this is a wonderful idea. I won't remember much of the plot, except for the parts that become well known in our class. It is an over-wrought tale of high drama (much like this one), perfectly suited to the imagination of a middle school girl. There are star crossed lovers, perhaps a triangle of unrequited loves. There is a suicide, jumping off the cliffs of Ireland, realizing on the way down how beautiful the white cliffs really were, the soaring birds, the waves below, undulating, pulsing, all of it full of life, and there is so much more to it than the love of this one man. But oops! What has she done? Splat. A tragedy, every word of it.

I am consistently pulling F's in penmanship, although I spend my summers practicing. I am more concerned with ideas than the look of them. I complain that my hand-writing is more legible than most of the boys'. But our sixth grade teacher, Mr. Langford, tells me that it doesn't matter for them. They will be doctors and lawyers. I will be their secretary and my hand-writing matters and that is why he grades me so harshly. He's just looking out for me.

So my mother offers to type the manuscript. I bind it with my favorite ribbon: satin and velvet and seafoam green. I am proud of my work. I am certain it will cause tears and I am sure they will be the reader's.

Her party is at a house that was not hers. It is a darker house, with shag carpet. I have never been here before, nor will I ever be here again. I will dream about this house for decades, not remembering how it is I know this house. In these dreams I will be annoyed: Why are we at this house? Why is Naomi always in this house? This isn't even her house! I will forget this house in my early 20's when I will feel that this memory is behind me. But the house will continue to haunt my dreams. Nearly three decades after this party, I will pick up a book called The Gift and before I can start reading it, the entire memory is fully engaged, crushing me. The Gift, indeed. This is the house.

She takes my gift, wrapped in white tissue paper. Delicate, I think. I am beside myself with excitement. I have spent all of my spare time in the past two weeks working on this. It's the best story I've written to date. It's going to be the most unique and special gift ever (Naomi hates that word, "special," although she constantly strives toward the concept herself, it is, as a word, banned from our class.)

She opens it and things go wrong. I can predict it now. You can predict it too, right?

She screws up her mouth, recoils, "What is this?" she asks as if I've just handed her dog shit. She knows very well what it is, she just doesn't think it should be in the house.

"A novella!" I announce, proudly, trying to turn the situation around, trying to sell it, sell my gift. I pretend I don't see what I see, I don't hear what I hear.

"Why would I want this?" She is angry. In her voice you can almost hear a scream, "OFF WITH HER HEAD!"

"I wrote it for you!"

She tosses it aside.This moment, this disgruntlement at her party, will not enough for her. But I don't see any of it yet. I am confused. I am still trying to be enthusiastic. I am still trying to believe what my mother said, that home made gifts, from the heart, are best.

All weekend I anticipate her accolades. She will read it, I know, and she will be moved beyond imagining. Just wait and see. She will return to school on Monday raving about my abilities. Yes, she is THE artist, and she will crown me THE writer.  I even imagine that someday my novella will really be worth money. Someday, she can sell the original and buy herself the birthday present she deserves. Someday I will have value. Someday she will love me. I can hardly sleep, I'm so excited for the wonders that will unfold before me. I see my life as a spool of golden thread and each year a glittering moment will unravel itself into the world and it will be glorious.

Monday morning I ask if she read it. She smiles. Yes, she had. She spends the next several weeks making fun of every phrase and idea. She finds plot holes and announces them too our class, how stupid I was.  How do we hear the thoughts of the woman as she falls off the cliff? She dies and so we CAN'T know her thoughts. Plus, suicide is just stupid. Who doesn't want to live? What's wrong with you that you'd imagine such a dumb thing?

It occurs to me that perhaps I'm the only person that has felt that way. Later, I will see that it is  mostly when I'm around her, which is every day, for years and years. But I don't say that. It would be mean. I, for one, am not mean.

I no longer believe that the world inevitably wants and needs my gifts. I write anyway. I can't stop, though it hurts some times and I have to slaughter a million demons, half of them Naomi-shaped, to do it.

***

It's silly to have put so much power into the hands of 11 year olds, her and me. And yet they call them "formative years" for a reason. We cannot erase these things. We do not just "get over it," advice some people toss off so easily. I find these people bury, deny, and stuff rather than truly heal. True healing, for me, takes time and at least one honest glimpse at the depth of the wounds.  Like any healer, we examine the wound for a moment, we clean out the debris, get a good look, and then set to work with the antiseptics and the stitches and all of the time it takes.

Relating

I wish I had known better than to give her something she was obviously so unsuited for. Perhaps I should have. Oh, and she should have too. But she was not just any 11 year old. I don't know an 11 year old that would have responded like that to any gift: not me, not my kids, not my kids' friends. A three year old, maybe. At 11, despite my urgings not to, my daughter made gifts for her friends. And they loved them. They still exchange home made gifts and they agree they are the best. There's always one that can't bring a gift and no one even notices. I can see now that this story of mine was not inevitable. It did not have to be this way. The flaw was not with my naivete or my gift. There is not only one way to respond to home made gifts.

My consolation is that I am not her, nor will I ever be. I may be scarred, but I do not cut to the bone every person who loves me.


I don't use her real name here as some twisted revenge, tattling on what a disgusting child she once was. I used her real name here because I'm telling my story with as much truth as I can. This is my story and I'm entitled to it. And why should I take pains to prevent accountability? I have wasted too much time falling on my sword for people that seek to hurt me. I have searched my heart and I have no desire to protect her from the truth. Truth is not an enemy. And anyway, she will not read this blog. I don't even want her to. I hope she's better now. I hope she became human along the rocky way. I understand she was just a child too. Those were her formative years as well, and no one was apparently helping her grow or holding her accountable.

This story would be so wonderful if I'd found success in writing.  If I was now a well-published author, or even a mildly published one, this would be an uplifting tale of courage and bravery and triumph of the human spirit. People would look to it for inspiration. They would say, oh but maybe my dreams are possible too; did you know that Sarajoy Van Boven had to overcome the wicked witch of middle school, plus a high school creative writing teacher who declared she had no original ideas and then with no sense of irony accused her of plagiarizing her short stories because they weren't about highschool the way everyone else's were.  (Particularly one about a naval pilot who abandons his sinking ship and then is dragged down to his death anyway as the boat sinks, amid a sea of burning oil, losing in the end both his life (inevitably) and his integrity (his choice). Perhaps I'd never drowned in the South China Sea, but I had read an entire volume of such stories, plus The Black Stallion, which did inform my original story, but I did not copy.)  But I'm afraid that this tale, as is, is too familiar. That moment everyone endures in childhood, the crushing of dreams, the unrequited love, the death of something within. The struggle to make none of it matter, in the end.

I know, again now, that my gifts are for giving, although I am clear that one can never be sure of they're reception. It is my job to go to seed, it is not my concern upon what soil, fertile or hostile, these seeds fall. Although, as any flower, I can't help but long for some of my seeds to take root and thrive.

Coyote is 11 now. I wonder what he's going through, what feels normal to him but isn't. What will take decades (if ever) to heal from? What does he not even know he needs to talk about? What minor seeming incidents are wounding him today? What poisons is he ingesting that will take decades to kill him? What can't I protect him from?

A mouse ran this question mark in the snow.

The Wind's Epic

For those of you who watch national news, you may be surprised to learn that our region had an apparently not national-news-worthy and yet historic wind storm. I suspect we did not make your evening corporate news because wind storms don't get names and aren't things with any kind of understanding of what they are and how much they are to be feared. But it was indeed a thing that kept my kids out of school for the past 12 days (wind + Thanksgiving) and screwed up every schedule of every person.

You may imagine that we here in Spokane are wimps of the highest order: Wind? School closures? Pull it together people! But the truth is that hundreds if not thousands of giant trees fell in this wind. We don't have wind-friendly trees here. We don't have bendy palms built to withstand sustained gusts of 71 mph. Our deciduous trees fared fairly well, simply letting go of their last few kite-leaves. But our pines and spruces flew through our skies like maces of war. Spruces are thick with needles like sailcloth. And they have shallow, wimpy root systems. They remind me the Tonka trucks people drive around, all jacked up and tough lookin', but it's all show, all compensation. I felt bad about it later, but I actually laughed when I saw their spindly spaghetti like roots upended and exposed. I'd never imagined that such stout trees had so little in the ground. Meanwhile, the pines snapped like uncooked spaghetti noodles.  These huge, ancient trees propelled through power lines that went out with fireworks and rainbow explosions. All over town. Every street and every corner. 198,000 customers (and by that they don't mean individuals, they mean points of service) were without power, the foundation of our civilization. The threads woven above our heads, the crocheted electricity upon which we now depend for every bit of our basic survival needs, dissolved upon our heads.

Touring the damage this past week, it seemed that the trees tried hard to not hurt anyone. I saw 60 foot pines that seemed to thread themselves between houses. Garages were smashed over and over, but only a few houses. Only a few people died. The roads are clear now, but for days no one could go anywhere. The road to our church, through a graveyard, had no less than 6 pines plaited across just one block. Huck drove home that way on that Tuesday night because all other routes were blocked. Only two trees were down at the time, a Subaru trapped between them. Huck and others left their cars to help the man out. Four fell there after they left. Although the logs have been sawed off and removed, the road is still draped in a festive garland of power-lines and pine bows. Closer to home, Huck detoured several times around downed trees and power-lines trapping a woman in her car (emergency responders were able to make it to this one).

I picked up the kids at what was predicted to be the height of the storm, but turned out to be only the initial stages, around 3pm that day, Tuesday, November 17th. Three years to the day of my head injury. On my way to their schools, crossing the I-90 bridge over Latah Creek canyon, my car felt like it would flutter off like a leaf, and land like meteorite 100 feet below.  

It was garbage day and I'd bemoaned on Facebook that our prevailing winds would yet again upend the collected cans at the end of our road, on the corner of our property and bring us fabulously gross gifts that I would then have to gather like candy tossed during a parade, just like candy, yes. But the winds giveth and the winds taketh away. Whatever landed in our yard that day, aside from a metal sign, was quickly whisked away to someone else's.

The kids and I headed up South Hill to run a few errands I'd planned days before, but as we drove up Stevens Street a garbage can toppled and was pushed up the hill, on it's side, next to us. It got it's own lane, a bus following it, and kept pace with us. That was when I knew we were in for something special.

Sunflower stalks survived the windstorm wa-ay better than spruces

At Target, the electricity went out, briefly. When it returned, the registers all had to be rebooted and the line was extensive. We huddled with a group of employees as we listened to the loud crashing above us, like dumpsters skipping across the roof. Killing time, we picked up a few more pants for Coyote, who like most boys, burns through pants like matches. When things started moving again, we checked out and just as the cashier handed me the receipt, the lights went out again.

Most of the stores went down then. And with that, all of the milk and cheese and eggs and meat and tofu  and every single frozen thing from ice cream to fish to frozen entrees in Spokane was gone and had to be thrown out and it would be days before we got anything like it again. My chicory coffee would be cut with evaporated milk that week. It was so so sad. Facebook became a beacon of information. We turned to it for the list of a handful of stores that were open, running on generators or using flashlights and taking cash only. One needed a guide to open gas stations so as to not run out of gas in searching for it. The lines were long. This went on for a modernly improbable number of days.

We headed home down Hatch Road, a veritable gauntlet of listing pines. The crumbling thoroughfare, built on a sandy slope and a piece of roadwork with will never be anything but an arterial of potholes, winds along a western hillside and was receiving the brunt of weatherly blows. At that point, no trees had yet crushed it and the tumble weeds were using it as a highway of mass migration. I love driving over tumble weeds, especially in the dark. They explode in my headlights like supernovas. I aim for them. But then that's probably because my car is 10 years old. The BMW in front of me would not engage in any such revelry and insisted on passing them as if they were cars. This meant that we also were compelled to stop for tumble weeds and wait behind the BMW to pass them, like fucking cars. And so we waited, vulnerable, as the pines menaced us from above.

Apple rose prep

Our electricity only went out for a moment, just long enough to screw up all the household clocks. Out here, on Paradise Prairie, we suffer chronic scouring winds. What was going to give way to them, would have done so long ago. It's a winnowing of years that leaves only the toughest. Or alternatively, just loosened them up for the final "blow" as was the case with some old barns which came undone, their bones scattering across the prairie. But otherwise, our few trees withstood it all. Our house was one of three in our area to retain power. I felt part guilt, part gloat that our house, not quite as fancy as the others around here, was good enough to keep the lights on. We lost maybe 20 shingles. Some other, more expensive houses, lost a lot more.

The next morning all was quiet, calm, sunny, perfect. The wind did not return for a long time, as if we'd used up all our allotted invisible-miles-per-hour in just one evening. The 300,000 people without power needed to keep warm and the smoke from their wood stoves settled over the region and that is what we breathed.

In the city, there was looting. The police also complained of a tripling of accidents. Standard routes were blocked. People had to go around only to find that route blocked too. They started to speed around every closed option. People suddenly forgot how to navigate intersections without streetlights. They forgot how to drive. Everything was confused. Schedules out of whack. Neighbors banded together. They went tribal. There were bonfires in the streets guarded by machete wielding vigilantes, unwilling to let thieves take the block (eyewitnesses: Blue and Huck).

Our freezer and electric juice were opened up to all who needed it. And they did.

Coyote taste tested his lemon bars by cutting a circle out of the middle and filling the hole with lemon slices, oh so decorative!

We did not lose electricity, but we did lose internet. It was Mario Kart for hours. And I kicked everyone's asses at Farm-opoly, a gleeful compensation for my failures in real life. Friends got hotels and we swam in their pool. Hotel occupancy November 16 was around 50%. Hotel occupancy November 18 was 99%. And every night we would hear the news, still no school. The trees had crushed some schools. Many had no power. Most children could not walk to school without threading their way through downed lines like some messed up spy movie. Many roads were still closed. Meanwhile, on Lucky Farm, our greatest hardship was running out of phone data and having to buy more. I wonder if my homeowners insurance will cover $30 in extra Verizon charges? While school was out and the internet down, our kids rekindled hobbies. Coyote actually read a giant book and made lemon bars. Blue knitted a scarf and baked elaborate apple roses.

Today was the first day they returned to school. With some amount of senior-itis, I skipped church yesterday, shoving them all out the door without me, beyond desperate for some alone time and unable to wait even one more day.

We discovered this morning that lunch boxes with half-eaten lunches were left in back packs for nearly two weeks. We also discovered forgotten homework assignments. And now things will get back to boring and bleak normal. At least for the three weeks until Christmas break.

The scarf

Calculating the Half-Life

Decades ago. Decades. I was 20, almost 21. My first husband left and I became a feminist. I had married so early, months after turning 18. It's what our parents had done. It was part of our religion, no sex until marriage, and 18 was as long as I could wait. Plus I needed to know, have it in writing, who was going to love me forever. And after a shocking and deep heartbreak, the answer became, hopefully: me. As part of my re-education, I'd read Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings, and was moving on to some essential second wave feminist novel that I understood was required reading for the newly converted. I wish I could remember the title. Maybe some reader will recognize it and I'll be roundly chastised for never having gotten past the 20th page. This is because at 20 pages in we were still on the opening scene: a woman, (a homemaker, I think), gazing at herself in a mirror, analyzing her wrinkles and gray hair, wondering how the hell she got where she was. "Holy Fuck!" 20-year-old Sarajoy exclaimed, "Who gives a shit!? That is waaay more self-pity and navel gazing than anyone should ever have time for!"

This is to say: Sorry about this post!

Middle aged Zinnia

If you don't want to read about a disabled homemaker turning 40, not even this one, then I highly suggest you stop reading two paragraphs ago. But for me, today, I occupy that space, I take that baton for my lap in this relay. I am that 40 yo SAHM with no career prospects, a life I never intended, a life paused and the remote's batteries are missing. We are unsure how to un-pause from here.

I myself am as horrified as anyone that this birthday is affecting me so horribly. It's cliche. It's boring. It's pathetic. But it's real. Huck's trying to get me to birthday party, but I can't. Although I am eating cake for every meal this week.

Someone recently summarized the state of affairs in my life right now by surmising, "that time in your life." That cliche 40 time. That time where the practicing ends and the business begins. It's that point in Yahtzee where you stop "going for" your four of a kind and your sixes and start accepting your bullshit rolls, you take a 12 for your sixes and just forget about the 35 point bonus. You plop a goose egg on the large straight. You laugh at yourself, did you ever really believe you'd roll a large straight! HAHA!

But I don't want to feel like a statistic, that my feelings are all just part of the ride, a predetermined nadir on the roller coaster. But it's true. Forty IS statistically the trough of happiness in the average life and average life span. And as every second wave feminist novel will tell you, it's part of the patriarchal ride. Plus, I've gotten really in to Joni Mitchell lately and that's puts me solidly, undeniably, in to the 40 year old box.

Don't worry, I won't be cataloging wrinkles and bulges. I take pride in my grey streaked hair. I have long since made peace with the probability that, if I am very lucky, I will be an adorable, wrinkled, weathered and stooped old lady. I will have a belt buckle burrowed deep between a round belly and saggy boobs. And this will not happen over night (at least I hope not). Best case scenario is that I get there bit by bit, day by day, mile by mile. I have a regal and distinguished destination. As I traverse from sea to shining sea, I will transform from the pert Rocky mountains to the old, slumped Appalachians. And I accept the necessity of every mile carved onto my corporeal being. Would it be too much to reference South Dakota's Mt. Rushmore here? too Woody Guthrie? But I am in the South Dakota of life, and even here, there are wonderful natural formations: The Bad Lands. No, I am not miffed by the years seeping in to my face. Nope, I've got a handful of face-cream helpers to smooth that transition.

I tried squirming away from these uncomfortable feelings using logic and anthropology. The only reason 40 is a big deal is because we live in a culture that 1) celebrates birthdays. We don't just say, "Yeah, I've been around for 39 winters." We have a date, a point in time that comes with cake and pointy hats and annoying expectations. 2) We live long enough to celebrate 40th birthdays, and long enough to celebrate them as a half way point. 3) We have a base ten number system. 40 would be nothing to a Mayan. The Mayans had a base 16 system where the numbers go up to 16 before there's anything in the "tens" column. So if I were Mayan (and what with my Mayan tattoos given to me by Mayans, I'm practically 100% Mayan already), my big birthdays (I'm unsure if ancient Mayans kept track of that stuff) would've been 16 and 32. And that means that it's no biggy until I'm 48. The problems isn't 40, it's the base ten number system of modern times. But the unavoidable truth is that these are the times I live in, with the numbers I have.  Fourty is a mile marker here, now, and I am not ancient Mayan, not even a little bit. And modern Mayans use the same number system I do.
 
The problem is where I AM at my supposed midpoint. It's the view, or rather lack thereof, that bothers me. It's that things still aren't going my way at this check point. It's the terrifying and yet reassuring understanding that life and I have come to at this point: I'm not very much in control of any of it.

Middle-aged Zinnia: beautiful as it dies

Poor me. I'm half way done, or so the narrative goes. It's all downhill from here. Honestly, I could use a little down hill coasting at this point. But is it really half way? If genetics gets a say, I'm either 2/3 done or half way will actually be at age 46. Of course there's always the random meteorite, e. coli and car accident. I could be 99% done and we won't know until the close of business tomorrow.

Not only am I a homemaker turning 40, I'm also still unable to work thanks to my TBI. I screw shit up all the time. I lose important papers. I forget to return phone calls. I lose time. I lose conversation threads. People start talking to me like we're best friends and I can't even place where I've seen them before. I'm constantly reminding the world that I don't function "normally" (and I'm not sure I ever did) so please stop expecting me to. I'd hate to screw up someone's business, or be constantly worried that I would. So, not only am I unemployed, I'm unemployable. I would not hire me, as is.

I could maybe work part time right now, but I'd have 0 energy for my kids at the end of a short day. Plus, I'm unsure what part time work I'd be suited to. It would need to be work that if I screwed it up, it wouldn't be a big deal. I'm not sure that I could psychologically handle any work simple enough for me to mentally handle. I do not think that would be any solution to my existential crisis. I don't think a bullshit job would add meaning to, or a sense of control over, my life.

Someone recently used the '80's term "Displaced Homemaker," to describe me and I almost threw up. Someone suggested I go back to community college and I've been having community college nightmares ever since. I actually loved my community college experience, but I don't want to go back. In my nightmares I'm stuck in community college, and I know I don't belong there anymore. I run around trying to tell people that I don't belong there, to let me out, that I've already done all of this; I've done my time, dammit! My locker won't open, I can't remember the combination and I yell that community college doesn't have lockers and dammit this IS NOT even going to be high school in this dream. I graduated from a University, top of my class. Please, please let me out. Eventually I realize that it's college, not prison, and I run, run, run away, eating handfuls of hallucinogenic Oregon grapes and salal as I go. I will not go back! I will not enroll in displaced homemaker kindergarten, not unless there are naps!

Maybe there is some career or work for me. Maybe. I'm trying to keep an open mind. So I took some personality and career tests. The career tests showed that I have absolutely no overlap with known gainful employment. It literally said, "Nothing."

At Level 3 training, it said "Stone Carver." I can't imagine anyone wants me using power tools or carving things in to stone. I would be comfortable with the concept of headstones, but I doubt anyone else would be comfortable with my execution, with the typos on their loved one's graves.

At Level 4 training, I got "Writer," and "Poet." I'm not understanding why these were included in a test for gainful employment.

At the level of jobs requiring a PhD (Level 5), I was directed to become a therapist, art therapist, or neuropsychologist. After nearly three years of hard work, including a year of speech therapy, I've maxed out the amount of time I can read and comprehend at 45 minutes on a good day. One wonders what would become of me while taking the graduated school entrance exams, much less doing actual graduate work.

I then discovered that my Meyers-Briggs personality has changed, several letters are different; I think there used to be a J and a T in there. According to this revered yet "cocktail-party trick" of a personality test, I am now: Introvert, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceptive. A veritable Deanna Troi, with a smaller rack. And just as employable outside of the Enterprise. I have the least employment prone personality set. According to the assessment, it wouldn't even occur to INFP's to succeed in business, or try. It's not that we're lazy. We're just fundamentally impractical and we can't see our way to being practical. When a percentage of us do find our way to careers, we are typically miserable in them. We are interesting. We are creative. We are sensitive. We are hard workers. We long to be practical, useful. But alas, we are not built for today's world. We are doomed to live out our accomplishment-free lives gazing forlornly across the fence to the literally greener grasses (because they can afford lawn care) of others. It was kinda relieving to know that it's not that I should just try harder. I'm already consistently working at the outer edges of my abilities, pushing, always, on the boundaries what I can do now and the idea that I should try harder seems rude and ridiculous. It's that I'm a square peg, by nature. It's not a moral failing, it's a structural one. I'm just not built to career. And careers are not built for me.

Echinacea: Age on the edges

I sometimes masochistically read articles like "7 Things Successful People Do", "Ten reasons you're not successful", et al. The first thing I'd like to note is that none of the things Successful People do is read or write such internet filler. I would be "Exhibit A" in that department. The second thing is that I've learned to rephrase these statements: "7 Traits that are currently being financially rewarded," and "Ten things you could be if you had a personality transplant" If one personality-set were successful in every day and every age of humanity, that would be very stupid. We all have different sets of skills and methods and each set is suited to thrive in some situation humans might find themselves in. My set does not appear to be a necessary part of modern day workings right now. I am the "This Page Intentionally Left Blank" of humanity during this era. We can admit that this is not the environment my personality niche is suited to. I am the humming bird who's flower I co-evolved with no longer exists.

I also take issue with the term "Successful People." What the fuck does that even mean? Gainfully employed? Slave wages employment? Bullshit jobs that ad no value to our collective experience? These articles never include a working definition of "successful."

Charlie Chaplin was one of my favorite "Seems Successful" people. Funny, creative, intelligent, bold. I've been in love with him since middle school. Unfortunately, I just read a more comprehensive biography of him (one 30-45 minute session at a time!) and he was a fucking mess. His mother was a prostitute who went insane. His dad didn't feel like it, so he dropped his two boys off at a workhouse. He finally makes it to America and Hollywood and makes it big BIG. But the funnier and more successful he gets, the crueler he becomes in real life. He was a fucking asshole. He seems to have so much insight, but he was an asshole in all his personal dealings. Acknowledging his Dickensian rough start was likely detrimental, no matter how commercially successful he was, he never became a successfully whole person.

I also read a biography on Lord Byron, writer of the syrupiest love poetry ever known to man. You don't even need to have an object of affection to fall in love by way of his work. You just fall in love with love. But as a person, he was a very cruel douche-sack to every one of his lovers. He fucked everything and everyone. He was vicious and predatory and incapable of any real love.

This is what I think of as a bifurcation process. Perhaps that's not the official word, but it's the one I use. I imagine that the effort that goes in to putting up a front prevents one from actually being the thing one is fronting. Charlie Chaplin had exactly zero "Little Tramp" lightness in his real life. Lord Byron wrote incredible love poems, but he never loved, he never went beyond the tumultuous surface of falling in love, to the quiet depths below, the actual loving. He gave his only child a Chaplin-esc childhood, of which she died.

And I see it everywhere. Now more than ever, with our curated social media personas. The person who talks incessantly about yoga never actually does it. The one who's always posting about compassion, has none, face to face. The person who brags about leaps and bounds of personal growth does so while lying about what's really going on her life. Active wear used for netflix binges. The blogger-personas that we're all told are key to successful blogging (whatever that even is.) Bloggers are told to adopt a sale-able identity, to be the recipe lady, or the canning woman, or the mom. But I just can't. Down that road they tell me lies success, but I only see madness. Maybe it's the success-phobic INFP's need for authenticity talking. But truly, I am not one thing. I am not going to "seem" in order to be "seen". And I'm not going to adopt a simple, marketable identity.  Complexity doesn't sell, they say. Just "being" doesn't sell. I'm supposed to tell you that I'm one thing, I'm a product. I am the person who writes love poems or I am the SAHM "Little Tramp." But I can't do it. Even for mere bloggers there's the danger of bifurcation, of false fronts, of rotten insides. Big Money doesn't have to be at the end of the bifurcation rainbow in order for "presentation" to destroy the interior.

I can't imagine every successful person is thus bifurcated. But presenting a facade to the world must take it's toll. And in this I am lucky. Forty years old, unemployable, disabled, home"making" (haha!) mother that I am, I am free to pursue a complete integration of myself. My ugly shadows and my elegant light are both welcome in this unsuccessful place, or rather, that is what I strive for. And someday, perhaps that could become the prevailing definition of a "Successful Person." It is to me. And it's what I can do. And it's how I can contribute to this world right now, by being as much myself, as fully, as integrated, as I can be, day by day.

Chocolate mint

What exactly have I done for 40 years? What do I have to show for it? No career, but let me tell you: I've grown from scratch. I've learned to read twice! I've learned to walk and talk one-and-a-half times! I've done all my schooling, even college. I got married, twice! I've owned two houses, or perhaps I've owned one and been own by the other, but that's a different blog post. I've traveled all over the world and the memories are Wordsworth's daffodils. I grew humans from scratch, twice! And really what is more trippy and biologically successful than bringing life in to the world. I know it's not for everyone, and not everyone can have that experience, but for me, it's really been a capstone experience. I taught them to walk and read and ride bikes and camp and cook and love, hopefully. I've been fortunate in many ways. I may not have an income or a career, but looking at it this way, I've been very simply a successful biological being, a human, learning and re-learning how to live in this place, in this time. And that's all. Is that enough? It must be. It's all I've got.

A Crappy Secret

My sedan is full of boys, ten and eleven year olds. They’re telling stories and they’ve stumbled upon their perfect topic combo: tattling on siblings meets toilet humor. We hear about pooh smears and a two year old eating a log like a candy bar, tales any sane child would keep to himself and every sibling delights in telling.

I hear my son pipe up. His voice sends up an entire drill team of red flags in my gut. He says, “My mom ate poo once, didn’t you mom!!” The car erupts in groans and howls.  “I was five!” I yell over the din. “And I want a new mouth now. Maybe a new son too,” I mutter as I take our exit, swooping over the freeway.

“What? How?!” They clamber.

The neighbor girl Debbi and I are five. One of us poops in the toilet. One of us wonders if it would taste as bad as it smells. Dares are levied. I wager no one will ever find out. Debbi and I would keep the secret forever. And so I reach down through the cold toilet water and… and… and I break that taboo, that utterly sensible taboo. I scooped a dab onto my pointer finger and quickly … It tasted like you’d imagine it would, like shit. And the secret kept until my son was three.

When he was three, he wondered aloud what poo would taste like. As any good mother would, I flung myself between my child and imminent health danger with an embarrassing memory on the side. I told him it tasted like it smelled, but slightly less flavorful than you’d imagine. And he wanted to know how I knew for sure.

I’m wishing just now, however, that I’d kept my cautionary tale to myself and my son had earned his own secret, one he’d be much more likely to keep. But how could I blame him? The tale is one of daring and courage and disgust and by someone’s mother no less! To a car full of boys, it was the grossest tale ever told, and to them gross is a synonym for great. 

And now all the pre-adolescent boys I know are sitting in the back seat in a hushed and hallowed awe of my son’s mother.

We arrive finally at the warehouse of trampolines. They all leap from the car and I realize my secret’s out now, well and truly out, exuberantly out, and bouncing off the walls.

Coyote got "new" records for his birthday

I imagine his story goes like this: It’s my birthday. Actually my birthday was last week. I’m 11 now. We are on the way to Sky High, my favorite trampoline place. Actually, it’s the only trampoline place I know. 

We pick up Bishop and Silas (but not in that order) and we’re all joking and laughing about everything. Someone, maybe it’s Bishop, he starts talking about his little brothers. He’s talking about them and about poop. We’ve all got stories about poop.

And I told mine. It’s not actually my story – it’s my mom’s. But it feels like mine. I can’t remember ever NOT knowing the story. I love this story. My mom ate poop, straight out of the toilet, on a dare, a dare she maybe even started herself. She was little, so it’s a little okay.

The boys love it. They can’t believe it. Of course nobody even believes their parents were kids, not just kids, but really stupid and weird kids. I think she must’ve grown out of it. God, I hope she did. What if my mom still eats poo?! I’m pretty sure no one else’s mom tried poo. Girls don’t try poo. Moms don’t try poo. It’s crazy is what it is. We’re laughing – we can’t believe it. Mom. Girl. Poo!

I can’t ever forget it. And I don’t think my friends will either. I’m the kid with the mom that was gross once and that makes me cool, forever.