Map Making

Posted a picture on Facebook yesterday afternoon, and I have more to say about it than I could cram in a FB post.

My sister found it in a box of old photos in Dad's attic.  It's a picture of me, circa nineteen-eighty-something, out on the lake, sporting a mullet and clutching a Miller Lite.  I'm certain there was a Marlboro just outside the camera shot - I wouldn't have had a beer in one hand without having a cig in the other.

This picture is by far one of the funniest snapshots of my entire life.

It's also one of the saddest.

Unlike most of my friends, who reserved this sort of thing for letting their hair down on a random weekend from time to time...this was me, all the time.  Party girl, drinking and smoking and yelling or singing, telling profoundly dirty jokes and chasing boys (many of whom were running the other direction. Can you blame them?)

Was I funny?  The life of the party? A trip, a blast, a really good time?  Absolutely!  I had so much fun, it nearly killed me.  But...was I happy?

Never mind - rhetorical question.

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Another question, less rhetorical... should I be ashamed of that season in my life? 

Honestly, I don't think so.

However, there was a time up until recently, where I would've begged Kim to shred or burn this picture, or at least hide it where it would never again see the light of day.  And I would never - EVER - have put it on Facebook.

What if my boss ever sees it, or my colleagues at work?  What about my pastor or my Sunday School class, my kid's principal...or, oh Lord, what about my KIDS?!!?  I've tried to become someone my kids could look up to, and now I'm going to let them see this?

Why yes.  Yes I am.

I pray regularly that my children don't choose to venture down some of the roads I once traveled.  Not because it would hurt or embarrass me, but because there is nothing to be found there other than bitterness and despair.  You can't see that from the head of the trail, which is why it is so important to listen to others who've been there and made their way back.

But if they are anything like me, deaf to wisdom and blind to what they don't want to see, then I hope they will remember this picture of their mom.  Not as a cautionary tale or a finger-wagging admonition - more like a mile marker on a map, the beginning of a journey back out of the woods.  A journey that can begin anytime, and for as many times as it takes.

Is this picture something I'm proud of?  Lord no... and it's almost like those first thirty years of my life happened to somebody else.

But am I ashamed of it?

No - because, as Tolkien said, "not all who wander are lost".  And I thank God for not letting me get completely lost during all that wandering... for taking my hand and leading me out of the lonely woods.

And besides... it is a REALLY funny picture.

Revelation

It is Lent 2014, and in keeping with recent tradition, I have abstained from Facebook for a season of prayer and meditation. 

I know how ridiculous it sounds, the giving up of Facebook, but it is a difficult thing for me to lay aside, to deny.

It has been harder this year than in the past - but for unexpectedly different reasons.

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You see, my preoccupation with Facebook has long been based on no small degree of narcissism.  

Yes, I wanted to show off my family, and yes, I wanted to write witty snippets that made people smile and be glad that they know me.  Yes, I enjoyed being the center of attention, even if for only a few passing moments in somebody's random newsfeed.  

Essentially, the advent of social media gave me a whole new way to make it all about me.

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It also met another need, one that was still centered on self and similarly cringe-worthy.

From the day I left my childhood home and moved into an apartment, I've decorated my living spaces with photos - photos in albums, in frames, on the walls and on tables.  Photos of a life full of friends, family and lovely places.  

Absent photographic evidence to the contrary, my depressive inner voice told me that I was a lonely miscreant gargoyle with nothing but tragic destruction to claim as a life story - and that everyone around me thought the same. (Not that I'm prone to exaggeration or anything.)

Facebook gave me a new way to examine and consider my life, by putting the past and the present out there in words and pictures for evaluation.  

Did I package things carefully?  You betcha - Madison Avenue has got nothing on me.  My primary, conscious-or-otherwise FB goal was to find everybody from my past and demonstrate that I finally became a contributing member of society with a normal, nuclear family and successful career.  That I didn't end up in a trailer with nine kids from eight different baby daddies and an ailing liver full of rotgut vodka.

Over time, though, the packaging has dwindled and it occurred to me on a few fleeting occasions that the pictures and words I share on FB are actually closer to the truth than the distorted misfit gargoyle.  

That maybe (just maybe) I'm not quite the disaster movie I thought I'd been watching for the previous forty-something years. 

Again - all about me.

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Previous Lenten Facebook fasts have created angst on a number of fronts.  What if people, especially my non-Christian friends, thought me a freak for doing this?  How could I manage to stay in the spotlight?  What if I needed prayers or a recipe or help finding a lost dog? What if everybody, including me, starts remembering the gargoyle?

Yet I've soldiered on each Lent for the past three years, abstaining from Facebook in a well-publicized demonstration of faith and growing awareness of a 24/7 relationship with my Creator - who loves me enough to tell me the truth about me.  

That, although I once flirted with and am still capable of remarkable self-destruction, He will never let me go over the cliff as long as I hang onto Him and not me.

And while faith in Jesus is the most intimate relationship of all... 

everything remained still all about ME.

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Now, here we are and it is the midway point of Lent 2014.  I am off of Facebook and am startled to realize why I miss it this year, more than ever before. 

I miss my friends.

I miss the YOU of Facebook, not the me.

I have friends around the world and down the street; friends who are sick;  friends who have new babies;  friends who are going through life's dark lonely valleys; and friends who are celebrating triumphant mountaintops.  

There are new jobs and lost jobs and big fishes caught and disappointments large and small - 

and I want to know how YOU are.  

I want you to know that I care for you, and that I miss brightening your day.  Not for the attention of it, but for the giving of it.  

Also unlike Lents of the past, I find myself spending more time in prayer and study.  I journal my prayers, writing long letters to God and then quietly listening to the Holy Spirit in my heart.  

I am fully convinced that it is He who has drawn me out of me - and refocused me on you.

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I don't know if this made any sense to anybody, and since I'm not on Facebook to advertise its posting, few will probably see it anyway.  And it doesn't escape notice that this post is yet again all about me.

But in a good way, I think. :-)

Q & A

Today's blog post is courtesy of a dear friend who cares enough to nudge me out of complacence.  (You know who you are, and as always I am grateful for you.)

My recent reticence is a byproduct of a constant state of busy-ness, combined with a gnawing sense of inadequacy - that I am not enough, that there is not enough of me to go around.  I am empty and depleted and it just didn't seem like good blog fodder to come out here and proclaim my self-pity.  

Except.

Maybe - just maybe - I'm not the only person who ever feels this way.

I've been listening to Andy Stanley's current message series, titled "Ask It".  Well, that's not entirely true.  I listened to the first two installments of the series, which pissed me off to the point that I'm not ready yet to hear the last four.  

The messages are centered around a simple question to ask ourselves in relation to all decisions, big ones or small ones.  Decisions like - should I buy that, should I do this, should I eat that, should I go there, should I say that, should I...you get the gist here.  All decisions.

The simple question is this: 

"In light of my past experience, 

present circumstances, 

and future hopes and dreams, 

what is the wise thing to do?"  

Not the "good" thing, or the "right" thing - what is the WISE thing to do?

At face value, it's an innocuous and reasonable question, one that frames a sound decision-making process. I understand how the question works - I am not confused by it.  If I'm honest with myself, I am pretty sure that I generally know what the WISE choice would be in most decisions.

I am irritated about this question because I am cross with myself and with Pastor Smartypants for shining a giant ugly spotlight on the frequency with which I intentionally choose the unwise over the wise. 

Returning to my aforementioned maudlin state of mind, it makes me even crankier to realize that much of my funk is my own handiwork.  (Self-pity is a heckuva lot easier to embrace and camp out in when you can claim victimhood.)

In fairness, my decisions are a tad less unwise than in prior seasons of my life, where chaos, debt collection and relationship disasters were familiar companions.  I chalked much of it up to bad luck and other people's meanness - much easier than eyeballing myself in the mirror and calling a spade a spade.

But being older and wiser doesn't automatically infer the application of wisdom, and like sin, it can be argued that there really aren't degrees of wisdom.  You either choose the wise answer - or you don't.  And waffling is pointless - as Geddy Lee once put it, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice". 

So I am faced with some hard truth here.  I choose to eat poorly, dodge exercise, procrastinate, watch crap on TV, stay up too late, use words like "crap" and "pissed off" and other off-color language, waste time, take on too much, beat myself up for taking on too much, and feel guilty for all my poor choices, big or small.  No wonder I am blue.

As if exposing the question wasn't bad enough, Stanley goes on to explore the facts that King Solomon laid out in Proverbs, circa 970 B.C.  That's three thousand years ago, people.  Yet Solomon's teaching is both relevant and clear - you're either wise, or you're a fool.  Not sort of a fool, or a little bit foolish - a fool who actively chooses his/her folly.  

I don't want to be a fool. 

This is the part of the blog post where I'm supposed to turn the corner and realize the error of my ways and cheerfully commit to a day, a week, a life of good and wise choices henceforth.

But in light of my past experience, current circumstances and future hopes and dreams, it would be unwise for me to lie to myself or to you, my patient friends.  It would be unwise for me to make such a commitment because I would be setting myself up for failure before I hit the "publish" button...thereby perpetuating a stale old cycle of defeat and despair.

What I can do, however, and what appears to be the wise conclusion is this:  just for today - and maybe only for the next hour - I can be honest with myself about each decision, big or small.  I can choose the wise or the unwise answer, but I can't really claim that I don't know the difference, or that I don't have a choice.  We always have a choice.

And as odd as it may sound - that, my friends, is good news.

My Favorite Gifts This Year

While Christmas 2013 is now in the rearview mirror, it left me with several gifts - both tangible and otherwise - that will stay with me for a very long time.

• There's my new Sodastream home carbonation kit.  I love fizzy water, and you must read this Amazon review (http://www.amazon.com/review/R3QXLJ8UNCD688) to understand why I had to have one. Consumer awareness tip:  the root beer flavor is nasty, the diet cola smells like battery acid, but the pink grapefruit one and just plain fizzy water are phenomenal  
• There's my gorgeous and uber-comfy new La-Z-Boy leather office chair;  my lumbar and posterior areas are exceptionally appreciative.  Plus it smells good, and I will look all executive-like in my next video conference with the mothership
• Not one, but TWO pairs of new Merrells - snazzy dress clogs, plus some happenin' winter weather booties that will be the envy of everyone else slipping around in the North Georgia rain and ice this winter
• Once I figured out how to get my new FitBit Aria scale synched with the app on my phone and with the computer, I regretted it.  In the very near future, I am sure I will enjoy being able to monitor my weight and body fat fluctuations from anywhere.  But not today, because there is still toffee fudge to be consumed.
• A loving husband who cares enough to figure out that I need a new office chair even before I did
• A son who knows his momma's love for the absurd (hence my own "rich mahogany" edition of Anchorman)
• A daughter whose sweetest gift is always our time together. 

I've gotten something else this season, something I really didn't expect.

Over the last few months, through Thanksgiving and as recently as last night, God has overwhelmed me with the love and companionship of new friends.  While some of us have known each other for a while, we've only lately become close and I am sweetly surprised by the joy these new relationships have brought me.

You see, I thought I'd outgrown (or closed off) the part of me that lets other people all the way in.  Sure, I can talk to a wall, and heaven knows I let it all hang out in my writing.  But the intimacy of friendship - the opening of each others' homes, sharing meals and playing board games and just making each other laugh - these are things for which I didn't think I qualified anymore.  Too old, maybe.  Too private or maybe too uncomfortable and too worried I'd be judged harshly for my girth or my wayward sailor mouth or my schizo home decor.

Yet in His generosity and wisdom, God has seen fit to bless me with sisters and brothers who don't care about my furniture or my weight or the occasional f-bomb (I PROMISE I'm trying).  And I am profoundly grateful.

May I be the blessing to them that they have become to me.

Why I Celebrate Christmas

I do not make any bones about the fact that I am a follower of Jesus Christ. I don't wear a uniform or a badge that says so, and I try my level best not to beat other people over the head with my Bible.

Little offends me more than someone shoving their opinions on me, then trying to make me feel stupid for not believing what they believe - so I am not about to do it to anybody else.  However, I'm also not inviting debate, because neither of us will win.

What I am going to do, however, is explain why I celebrate Christmas.

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There's a lot of racket in the news this week about an old guy on a show called "Duck Dynasty" and how he has infuriated a lot of people by saying some stuff that sounded pretty judgmental.  My diverse array of friends are all divided and crabby and upset, staked out in their positions on this story and accusing "the other side" of being wrong and hateful.

Noting the obvious here, but that word is a condensed version of "hate-filled".

To my friends in both camps - don't be hate-filled, please.  Hate won't help;  it will only make you and other people sick, and while you might be surrounding yourself with people who hate the same things you do, hate is lonely inside.

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(It's also a little lonely out on the thin ice I'm fixing to step on, but I'm going there anyway.)

Some of my brethren espouse a cliche: "love the sinner, hate the sin".  We cling to the blank-check freedom that it gives us when we spot someone else's sin - "I love you, man, on account of me being a Christian and all, but I sure do hate your sin."  There's a subtle self-righteous thread woven in there that gives us a tiny warm meanness, a thrill of superiority.

Your sin, you see, is way worse than my sin.  I may have done "x", but you did "y", and what's worse, you don't appear to be sorry about it.  You've even made it pretty clear that you're going to do "y" again tomorrow, and maybe even "z".  So I love you, man, but I hate your sin.

Hmm?  What's that you ask?  What's this behind my back?  Oh, that... well, that's nothing, really... it's just my tiny little "x" sin.  It's certainly nothing compared to your "y", much less her "z" or his "xxx".  It's so little, it's barely noticeable.  But no, I'm not going to give it up.  It's mine.

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I've been taught - both didactically and experientially - that sin is a condition, not an act. Further, there are no "degrees" of sin - while some sins may be more socially acceptable than others, sin is sin is sin.

We refer to co-habitation outside of wedlock as "living in sin", but we are all living in sin. You, and me, and your parents and your children and all blondes, brunettes, redheads, drunks, baldies, addicts, pastors, students, teachers, doctors, homosexuals, heterosexuals, asexuals, bisexuals, business execs, nurses, volunteers, retail owners, nuns, priests, rabbis, enlightened ones, salesmen, and yes, even the Pope and Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama.  Every single one of us drawing breath lives in a hopeless condition of sin, whether evidenced in tiny white lies or genocide.

I believe that the earth, the universe and all that exists has been created, by a divine Creator - to whom I refer both as Almighty and Father.  He created man, the first man, and for a narrow sliver of time, man was sinless.  You know that saying about how nobody's perfect?  It's absolutely true, now...but once upon a time, before the man and his wife believed the biggest lie EVER, of all eternity, man was the perfect creation of the Creator.  Sinless and completely righteous.

You know the rest of that story.  Adam and Eve were the last two people to ever draw breath without sin.

God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden for spoiling perfection.  Yes, as punishment but mostly out of incompatibility.  Perfection and sin are mutually exclusive.

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Wouldn't it be depressing if that was the end of the story?

But this is why they call it "the good news"!  God loves His most precious creation (you and me) so much that He came here for us, to pick us up out of the scummy muck and mire of sin and restore us to right relationship with Him.  Not just for a relationship with Him while we're still sinners in this world, but one for eternity.

He didn't come in a thunderous chariot drawn by fire-breathing stallions, or on a bright white cloud streaming golden sunshine...he came as a squalling little Jewish baby, born in a crappy dirty barn in backwater Judea. To make things more confusing, the baby's mother was a virgin.  Say WHAT??!?

No wonder people find it a little hard to believe.

**********

One of God's many gifts is that of free will, and we all have the choice to believe the Nativity story or not. Secular history attests to the occurrence of Jesus' birth, so that part is fairly easy - it's the divine nature of the baby that gives people heartburn.  The perfect Son of God?  Who was, by the way, also God, but just in human form?  I get it - that's a tall order.

I don't judge people who don't believe it - I really don't.  I'm also not going to try and push or persuade or wheedle or shame or demand or cajole you into it.  Not my job.

But I DO believe it, and every year I celebrate the miracle of that baby's birth, as well as the miracle of that man's resurrection.  And I'm joining millions of others around the world, not because of my "religion", but because of my identity.

You see, I am a sinner in need of saving.  Why should I judge you for your sin? In my humble estimation, judging you would be a sin in and of itself.  I've got plenty as it is - why add more to the pile?

And because I am a sinner in need of saving, I joyously accept the gift offered to me through one unique baby's humble birth.

**********

So.

Tonight I will hold a candle and sing "Silent Night" and ponder all over again this notion of a divine infant, the incarnation of the Creator, and the reason He fooled with us in the first place...

He loves us.  He loves you.  He loves me.

Why wouldn't I celebrate that?!

A Very M.M. Thanksgiving

There is a tried and true recipe for holiday disappointment and drama, and it can be captured in one word - EXPECTATION.  Assuming he will be there too, when I get to heaven, I'm going to pop Norman Rockwell right in the mouth. 

Yet these days, when I reflect on my own catalogue of holiday memories, I'm struck by the joy and humor therein.  I think it's only in retrospect that I'm able to see that, because quite frankly, a lot of it seemed weird and terrible at the time.  Perspective is a fabulous lens.

Babble followers may recall previous installments wherein I provided a sketch of my maternal grandmother Alice Mildred Branson McRae, a.k.a. Miss Mildred, a.k.a. M. M.  (If you are new to Babble, please refer to the post about her from March 2012 for context.  "Unique" just doesn't do her justice.)

Anyhoo, Thanksgiving at Mildred's was unlike any of my friends' celebrations;  for years, I thought it best to keep quiet about our odd little gatherings.  They were just too weird, and I was already weird enough on my own merits.

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GUEST LIST

Mildred's official role on Congressman Duncan's staff included oversight of immigrant affairs, meaning she handled visas and residency applications and asylum-seekers and even sometimes eventual citizenship.  Every year, the guest list included at least one foreign national who probably didn't give a flip about the Mayflower but loved my grandmother.

Mildred never met a stranger, foreign or domestic, and the friendships that she forged with many of her clients spanned decades.  And so it isn't hard to see why we would always have a couple of extra seats at the Thanksgiving table occupied by Filipinos or Russians or Iraqis or Czechs.  (There was also a South African in there for a few years, but he was mostly my doing.  That's another story.)

• There was Nellie, the Russian beauty, about my mother's age, who drank too much Asti Spumante and wept for hours in between cigarettes;

• The handsome Czech youth (Lonnie?  Lenny?  L-something...) whom I heard later became a male stripper - although, knowing M.M., that may have already been on his resume by then...;

• The Haddads.  Here I must pause, for the Haddads loved my grandmother as much or more than I did, and I will be forever grateful to them for all they did for her over the years.  I never knew what Mr. Haddad did for a living either in Iraq or the U.S., but whatever it was, he was enormously successful.  I know he lived in fear of being deported and I suspect he was here under political asylum.  Anyway, the Haddads showered M.M. with gifts and affection and care and compassion even into her days at Shannondale nursing home and sat right behind me at her funeral.  The Haddads introduced us to Thanksgiving tabbouleh and stuffed grape leaves and I loved them for it.  One little funny about the Haddads though... the wife's mother spoke no English, and she was generally referenced to us as "Gladys".  However, whenever one of the Haddads addressed her directly, we distinctly heard them call her "F-you", with the "F"-word sounded out.  Since Gladys isn't a particularly common Iraqi name, we decided that they adopted it for American use, but poor Gladys' real name was probably more akin to something you'd hear in the Bronx.

• The Gomez'.  Maybelle Gomez was a scientist or engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and while I never knew exactly what she did out there, I always worried she'd had her hands in radioactive uranium prior to holding my hand each November during the Thanksgiving blessing.  Maybelle and her mother Virginia (another suspiciously convenient American name, if you ask me) were Filipino Christian exiles.  Maybelle was as sweet a human being as I've ever known, but she would go all dark and broody if the Marcos regime became a topic of conversation.  I don't think Maybelle liked me once I hit my rebellious season - I suspect snotty teenagers aren't generally well-tolerated in Manila.

There were others, I'm sure, but these are the guests that sit squarely atop my M.M. Thanksgiving memories.

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HAM-FISTED

One of my responsibilities in prepping for the annual Thanksgiving gala at M.M.'s was to brave the hordes at HoneyBaked Ham and deliver it an hour or so before the opening prayer.

Babble-followers, in addition to those intrepid souls who've been part of my inner circle over the years, are familiar with my historical penchant for a really good time.  I mean, a really good time, the kind that can involve shot glasses and various states of undress.  (Emphasis on HISTORICAL reiterated.)

Hawkeye's Corner was a popular nightspot in the Fort Sanders area and they offered a sadistic event each Wednesday night officially known as "Animal Hour".  Unlike your basic 2-for-1, or even those nutty Ladies' Night 3-for-1s...Animal Hour was, yep, you guessed it...a FOUR-for-one event customized to attract ne'er-do-wells who might or might not buy food but would sure as heck jam the bar upstairs.  I don't know how they ever made any money off of Animal Hour.  Perhaps the fact that I'm referencing Hawkeye's in the past tense is somehow related.  But I digress.

So, what, you must be asking yourself, does this have to do with Thanksgiving and ham?  Well, you'll note that Animal Hour was a Wednesday evening affair, even on Thanksgiving Eve.  Having staggered into my apartment late one particular November Wednesday evening in question, I was delighted to remember that I had a giant ham in my fridge, and since I was a bit peckish, I decided I'd have a little something something.

And then a little more.

And then some more.

Fast-forward to the next morning, when I arrived at M.M.'s house at the appointed hour of 11 a.m., with a much less heavy ham than the one I'd purchased at HBH roughly 24 hours before.  My fingers were swollen like sausages and I dearly wanted to vomit or at least lie down on the couch.  But no, there were guests and a scowling mother and grandmother to contend with, so I peeled back the gold foil wrapping to showcase a significant amount of hambone with just a few meager slices clinging to the end of it.

After a good stern talking-to, they let me go lie down.

But I never, and I do mean NEVER, lived down the year that I ate the flippin ham and showed up swollen and hungover, carting the bone.  When I brought my fiancée-who-eventually-became-the-Mister for his first visit, of course he was regaled with the ham story.  He married me anyway.

He likes ham, too.

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ALL JACKED UP

And speaking of the Mister's first Thanksgiving at M.M.'s, I have to relay a brief story about a table.  Not just any table, but the dining room table from my grandmother's (and previously my great-grandmother's) apartment.

It was a small and beautiful cherry hardwood table, complete with drop-leaves and inserts to make it big enough to seat 10-12 folks.  Of course, M.M.'s apartment was roughly 600 square feet, so it definitely took up a lot of space on Thanksgiving Day.  "Crowded" is an understatement.

Like most folks who are advancing in years and decreasing in body fat, M.M. was perpetually cold.  Her Ceil-Heat gauge was always cranked up past 80 degrees...add in a dozen people, in a tiny apartment, and sometimes a hangover...you get the picture.  Some years were just plain brutal.  People argued about who got the privilege of taking out the trash, just for a few treasured moments outdoors.  (And one of these days, I need somebody to explain to me why putting heating elements in the ceiling is a good idea.)

Anyway, on the occasion of the Mister's first Thanksgiving at M.M.'s, the table was set, the spumante was unscrewed, the ham was present in its entirety...and one side of the table collapsed.  Seriously, it just collapsed.  After much dithering and drama about what to do, my fiancée and brother-in-law cooked up an ingenious solution...

They jacked up the table.  With a tire jack from somebody's trunk.  I couldn't make this up if I tried.

We were hot and miserable but by God the table was level, and we enjoyed one of the last Thanksgivings in M.M.'s little place.

And we had yet another great story.

********************

I doubt there's any surprise in the fact that I've paid a few therapists in my day, and while there was a quack or two, there was one who was remarkably astute and helpful.  I will never forget telling Tom about my grandmother and our Thanksgivings, and I will never forget his response.

"My goodness, but you certainly have an interesting gene pool".

Dude - you have NO idea.

Thoughts on Turning Fifty

It feels like that subject line must be in reference to someone else, because I'm having trouble reconciling that as MY reality.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not particularly maudlin or gloomy (although I admit to indigo moments in recent days).  Instead I feel a tad confused, as if today marks the day that I turn male, or Indonesian, or perhaps into a pomegranate.  It just doesn't seem possible that I am fifty years old.

Somewhere in my alarmingly swollen collection of mementos, I have a small blue bear from my own infancy.  He is missing an eye and a half, and his neck is scrawny and wrung out from apparent tiny death grips, and if he ever had fur, I don't remember it - he's got more of a worn nubby terry cloth nature to his hide.  There's a smidge of red felt hanging rudely where a nose or mouth would've been.

Plainly speaking - he looks like hell. 

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Day before yesterday, I went to get a hair cut-and-highlights after work.  I'm not gray yet, but my natural color is politely referred to as dirty blond and it makes me look dead in the winter. It had been six months since my last appointment, and the stylist literally went "tsk, tsk" as she examined my roots.  Seriously - "tsk, tsk".  I felt chastised and guilty for my lack of hair discipline.

Because I primarily telecommute these days, I don't often bother with makeup, so I was au naturale.  After the coloring and shampoo, the stylist led me to her chair for my haircut.

As I sat down, hair still damp and towel around my neck, I was startled to see my mother looking back at me from the mirror.  Not the young, Marilyn-esque version, but the old crazy one.  (See Mother's Day post for further detail.)  Most of the time, I more closely resemble my dad, but there she was, disdain and condemnation clearly written all over her face.  I sat back and wanted to cry, but my sparkly 30-something stylist was bubbling about what she plans to do when she turns fifty, which is to get appallingly drunk and screw a movie star in Las Vegas.

You go gurrrl.

**********

It is an early Saturday morning as I write;  I stayed up far too late, wandering around on Spotify and listening to the music of my youth.  Yet my eyes popped back open at 3:30 a.m., and by 4:15 I was already irritated with the day ahead.  So I decided to get up and write.  And here I am. 

I haven't written in over a month because I am supposed to finish up the posts about Nicaragua, and I haven't wanted to do that because the next installment will have to be about the day when I was awful and I don't want to write about that.  Suffice to say that everything mean and selfish and bad about me was hanging out on display like a hooker in Amsterdam's red light district.  I'm told that nobody else really noticed - which is a polite and probably true thing to say.  I'm the only one obsessed with me and my mercurial moods.

Anyhow, guilt about unwritten posts notwithstanding, it seemed silly to let these quiet early morning hours pass without reminiscing and memorializing some of my thoughts on turning fifty today. 

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I wonder sometimes if we'll get to sit down in heaven with a big screen TV and watch our old earthly lives on DVR.  I hope there is a fast-forward button for the gross parts but also a slow motion button for all the beautiful parts.

I don't suppose I have to wait until then to remember some of them (in no particular order)...:

...our little and 100% perfect wedding in rural Kansas (beautiful)
...my mother's suicide attempts and institutionalizations (gross)
...trips with best friends to Alaska and the Caribbean and Washington D.C. and NYC and Nicaragua and Mexico and a dozen FL beaches (beautiful)
...my parents' divorce (gross)
...family beach trips (beautiful)
...a thousand beach memories (also beautiful)
...tearfully humming "Jesus Loves Me" in the back of a cop car (gross, but also kind of funny in retrospect)
...a dozen hot air balloons launching outside my window one morning (beautiful)
...a harvest moon hanging over the ocean (duh)
...seeing the scales approach 270 (gross)
...seeing the scales approach 170 (beautiful)
...weeping quietly in church pews at weddings and funerals and baptisms and most Sundays in general (I need an "other" category for this one)
...my mother's death (also "other")
...my mother playing with her grandbabies (beautiful on steroids)
...accidentally starting a fire by hanging my pants in front of the bathroom heater (I was 14, but still gross)
...stealing my mom's car to go meet boys and drink beer but instead backing into a gas pump and crying hysterically while the cops called my dad (uber gross)
...my father coming to see me graduate high school (beautiful)
...my father coming to see me graduate college (beautiful)
...my first marriage (other)
...my Walk to Emmaus (beautiful times infinity, really)
...falling asleep in the backseat as a kid (beautiful)
...Friday nights at the Ice Chalet and the first time somebody asked me to skate with them during the "couples" skate session (beautiful)
...my friends Max the dachshund, Montgomery the cat, Gillieflower the dachshund, Grover the black-and-tan coonhound, Grace the bloodhound, Esme the cat, Gladys the cat, Humphrey the maltese, Purrl Perkins the cat, Gwinevere the collie, Daisy Chin the cat, Little the beagle, Precious the scottie, Gorgeous the cat, Elvis the beagle, Ebenezer the schnauzer, Irving the dachshund, Magnolia the cat, Pootie the cat, Sandy the cat (all more beautiful than my heart can stand remembering)
...my husband's face during the births of our children (beautiful times ten million)
...my daughter's piano recital (beautiful)
...my son's mission work (beautiful)
...my son's first time as acolyte (beautiful)
...my daughter's daily side ponytail (beautiful)
...my thirtieth birthday (drunk on a barstool at La Paz - not beautiful)
...my fortieth birthday (got a tattoo out of spite and denial - also not beautiful)

...my baby sister texting me just now, at 6:30 a.m., to ask if we are grown ups yet (completely beautiful)

Wonder how the day ahead of me will be categorized? 

I will keep you posted.