Repeat

She stood in front of the mirror; the purple towel wrapped around her body, which was still a little wet from the shower. There was something sad about the whole picture. Everyday the same routine. Get up. Shower. Coffee. Eat. Drive. Teach. Repeat. You could see the weariness in her eyes and in the way her shoulders slumped. The permanent indents from her bra straps making little, deep V’s; a constant reminder of the burden of a large chest. Sighing, she went about the business of the day. Dry. Flat Iron. Hair goop. Make-up. Walking down to the basement bedroom, still in her towel, she hoped her roommate would not wake up and see her barely dressed. She had seen him naked once, having had to get up in the middle of night to pee, and it was mortifying for both of them. For some reason, he was standing in his doorway, bare-assed, at 3:00 am. Julie did not want anything like that to happen again. She hurried a little bit to get downstairs.

            Trying to decide what to wear always came down to what she felt the least fat in – or what she could wear over any number of smoothing devices she owned. The best one, a black tank-top that was long enough to tuck in and made her belly rolls all but disappear was lying on the floor, surrounded by four or five days worth of dirty laundry. “Have I worn this too many times this week?” She put the shirt on anyway, deciding it didn’t really matter.  The middle school students she taught smelled worse than her anyway – and then covered that smell with way too much Axe body spray. No one would be able to tell that she was wearing the same shirt three days in a row.

            The drive to work was uneventful. Only three times did she have to honk her horn in dismay at the turtle-like and non-purposeful Colorado drivers. She didn’t even spill her green tea. There was a moment when the news anchor on the local NPR station did not ask a further probing question of the republican senator she was interviewing when Julie could be seen from the cars around her to be yelling at the radio. However, since it was wintertime, no one could hear what she was saying. It was probably something like “You idiot, he isn’t even answering the question! Don’t let him get away with that!” More likely than not, it was just mumbled gurgling; incoherent to anyone but her. Green tea still un-spilled, she pulled into the parking lot at school, marveling for the umpteenth time how there could only be two entrances into a middle and high school campus that housed over 3,000 students. She tried not to be annoyed, because this was fruitless. Today she was failing.

            The day trundled on – questions answered, lessons taught, homework collected. Same. Same. Same. The drive home was even less eventful (two honks, no stupid senator, forgotten tea.) When she pulled into the driveway of her brand new house, she finally felt at peace. Opening the door to the front room, she walked into the kitchen. Ready to sand and paint in solitude for a few hours, she was escaping from her former life. This house was where she would start fresh. Like the new paint covering the old tired wood of the kitchen cabinets, the house was giving her a new life, and she it. No more Repeat.

The Recorders

          I have very few photographs of my mother when she was a young woman.  There are photographs of her when she was a child; the black and white squares filled with her smiling face surrounded by her four siblings, framed with white, scalloped edges. Many of the photographs were taken outside, her head covered with a stocking cap and wearing overalls. It is clear from these pictures that my mother was a tomboy, while her sister was the princess. Faye wore the frilly dresses that my mother disdained. I think it’s ironic that when I was growing up, she always tried to get me to wear those same kinds of dresses. I was of the same mind as her; you can’t play baseball or cops and robbers in a dress.

            Why is it that it becomes the mother’s job to be the recorder of the family history? And because that is her job, she then seems absent from it. She has spent my entire life behind the camera. We have thousands and thousands of moments recorded, and it seems that she wasn’t a part of any of them. When she is gone from my life, I will have to rely on my memory of her as a young mother. And memory is a fickle thing.

            I think it is the job of all mother’s to record – I have few pictures of my grandmother as a young woman as well.  There are pictures of her as a child, and as a Navy officer, but the minute she got married and started having children, the photos became about her family and not about her. Is this an observation about motherhood in general? Do we put so much of ourselves into the lives of our children and husbands that we seem absent? Or is it that we are the Mighty Oz, the wo(man) behind the curtain taking care of all the details that come with family life.

            I have been working on putting all of the family photos into albums for the last 10 years or so and it shocks me every time that there is a ratio of about 50:1 pictures without my mother and pictures with her. The most pictures were of her when she was pregnant with me. My favorite picture is of her at her baby shower, her red hair cut into a 1970’s pageboy. She is wearing a blue sundress and her stomach is huge with an 8-month baby belly.  There are two things about the photo that are striking. The first, that she is smoking and drinking a martini. I am not offended by this. She didn’t know how bad that was for babies, and it is a historical marker of the time. It is a bit shocking to new viewers, because I think we forget how recent medical discoveries about smoking have changed our view on this habit. The second thing is that Mom looks sublimely happy. She is radiant and dazzling, laughing in the picture at something someone said. You can tell that she is ecstatic to become a mother. This picture, though now missing, is my most precious piece of memorabilia of my mother.  When I think about this picture, I know that she was completely committed to the idea of motherhood. She may not have known what to expect, she may not have known she was about to become the recorder, the memory, for her family, but she welcomed the job just the same; with glee and an open heart. Even though she is still with me, and I hope to have her for many, many more years, this is how I always think of her.

Dear Death

Dear Death,

            It’s funny to start a letter with “dear” when the you who I am writing to is not dear to me.  Not in this case.  I know that death can be a blessing, but really you’re only a blessing to those you take, not the ones you leave behind. You took him from me when he was too young and so was I. I was so young that it didn’t occur to me that I would miss him still, fifteen years later. That I could walk down the street and see a picture on a billboard of a mountain lake and I would be seventeen again.  We would be jumping from the docks of his cabin into Lake Champlain, our hands grasped so tightly, knowing we could never, ever let go.  We hit the water, laughing and screaming in joy. We rise about the surface and grasp each other in tight hug, treading water while we kissed in the summer sunshine. We felt invincible.

            But you knew we were not invincible. No one is.  Youth protects us from the fear of death. And, then as we age the fear that blossoms, becomes lesser, and we come to accept that the end is inevitable – but you never gave him that chance, did you.  You took him from us before he could wizen and accept his fate.  He still felt invincible.

            I will have my whole life to miss him. He died at nineteen years old, and there has not been one day that has passed that he hasn’t manifested himself in some way.  Maybe I should thank you, Death.  Perhaps if he were living, I would not even think of him anymore. Perhaps, if he was still alive, he’d be married with children in some town in New York, a big Irish Setter running in the yard, and I wouldn’t even remember his name.  It was because he died, and died so young, without knowing how I felt about him, that I am the way I am today.  I won’t thank you for taking him from me.  I won’t thank you for taking him from his mother, who died soon after, or his father. His grief was bigger than he was, and could not be contained. I can’t thank you for taking such a bright and happy and smart young man from this world. 

            I will say thank you for one thing only.  Thank you for showing me that life is so very, very precious.  I never told him how much I loved and admired him.  I will feel the guilt of that omission for my whole life. His death was an accident, I know, and he was loved and admired by many.  I am sure he didn’t feel the lack of my love to any great extent.  It was me who missed out by not telling him the truth – that he was my person – and now I am worried that there is no other. So, Death, everyday I tell the people I love that they matter to me.  I won’t hang up the phone without telling my parents or my brother or my best friend: “I love you.”  I won’t thank you for anything else.

            Chad E. Dennison: 1976-1997.  What a short time to hear his laughter, and to see his eyebrows waggle when he was up to something.  I only knew him for three years, and I have never once wished that I had not met him. He was worth knowing, and worth losing. So, my dearest Death, now you know a little bit about the grief you leave behind when you take someone – I wonder if you think of it at all? I will thank you for one more thing.  Thank you for not taking him that day at the lake, when we jumped together, hand in hand. Thank you for giving us that moment – just that one moment – when we were invincible.

Sincerely,

Julie

Running

          Running

            The first time I realized I loved running was when I was, for a moment, alone on the Cherry Creek Dam Road. I had been training on and off for about 6 months and was only in it for the cheesecake – if I ran a certain amount of time I would burn a certain amount of calories – i.e. enough to eat some cheesecake.   I had not yet found what some refer to as the runner’s high; the feeling of great euphoria that comes after training hard for quite some time. Alone, on the Dam road for just a moment during my first 5K race, I was able to look around and feel singular in my effort. I had not run a race since high school. The air in my lungs, the cold wind at my back and the view of the majestic Rockies all collided in a moment of gratitude and nearly, the sublime. I was overwhelmed with feeling; so much so that I actually started to cry a little bit. I looked down at the wonder of my legs moving one foot in front of the other, carrying me to the finish line.

To run

Meaning:

To move quickly, so that both legs leave the ground

in Spanish para ejecutar

in French a executer

etymology:

run (v)

the modern verb is a merger of two related Old English words, the first is intransitive rinnan, irnan “to run, flow, run together” the second is Old English transitive weak verb aernan, earnan “ride, run to, reach, gain by running”

Both are from PIE *ri-ne-a-, nasalized form of root *reie- “to flow, run”

Poem:

I am the turtle

I plod on

Footstep after footstep

Until I am done

I am slow

But I am lapping everyone on the couch

Around and around

Until I am done

I am tired

But the kind of tired that makes you feel alive

Heartbeat after heartbeat

Until I am done

I am the sloth

Moving inches (it seems) in a day

Creeping and crawling

Until I am done

I am triumph

There is no giving up

Footstep after footstep

Until I am done.

List of injuries

            IT band strain

            Knee strain (both) 

            Shin splints

            Hip strain/misalignment

            Stress fracture in my left foot

            Loss of three toenails (and counting)

            Non-runners ask questions like “why do you run, its so hard on the body?” Or say things like “I hate running.” I like to say then don’t do it.

 Running for me is meditation.

It’s a way to run away from myself and my brain for a few minutes or a few hours.  If I want to turn of the thinking part of myself (which I need to do from time to time) I will slip on my hot pink trainers and hit the road.  Sometimes the monotony of hearing my feet hit the pavement is the only thing that will quell the adrenaline and quite my mind.  Running is salvation. If I didn’t have running, I would not ever be able to focus on anything. I would get nothing done. It has taken me a long time to realize that running is not something that gets done if I have time, but something that helps me get the time I need. Running is spiritual. I feel more connected to the universe and its infinite beauty when I am outside, jogging through rain and snow and summer heat. I feel like I am a part of that universe. Running is power.  I am overweight. I am the turtle. But I am a runner.

Tarot and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

The Knight of Pentacles

            “In the present position, the Knight of Pentacles signals that you may be bored amidst all of your contentment.”

            How selfish of me to be bored when I have almost everything I could possibly want. What a luxury it is to have time to be bored. I do not have to fight to survive or worry about paying my bills. I do not have to worry about getting sick or having a roof over my head. I am finally at a place in my life where there is not real financial hardship and I have the audacity to be bored.

The Three of Wands

            “The best position for the Three of Wands is the Future. When the card is drawn for here it shows that hope will spring eternal concerning all of the matters in which you are currently invested.”

            There are so many things that I am currently invested in – buying a house, remodeling a house, learning to feel confident in myself as a writer, finishing another graduate degree while working full time, trying to date and meet new people. I am always hopeful. I never doubt that things work out in the end. I trust that things happen for a reason. Again, how do possibly have the right to ever feel sad when everything I have ever wanted has come true for me eventually.

The Empress

“Looking into the future position, The Empress card foretells good things when landing here. This is the fairy tale happy ending. When the future holds as much promise as The Empress represents, you can know that a symbol of hope is becoming more real with each passing day. The card here can be an indicator of becoming wealthy or of finding a person who loves and appreciates you as their definition of beauty.”

The Empress has everything she could ever need and is looking to the next adventure. Do I have everything I need? In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs most of my physiological needs are met (food, shelter, air, etc..). I have my safety needs met (job, home, family, friends.) As far as love and belonging needs, I am secure in my friendships and my family, but I am lacking intimacy.  According the hierarchy that should make it much harder for me to have self-esteem and self-confidence, which should therefore make it nearly impossible to lead a creative life.  According to Maslow, I am incapable of self-actualization.  To me, this seems like another excuse to be unhappy.  I think I will disagree with Maslow and agree with the Tarot.  I am the Empress. I will be happy in life and in love, whatever forms they happen to take.