At My House

To my Grandchildren 

At my house,

I want you to get messy,

to be messy, to mess up.

I want you to paint with 

your fingers and your toes,

and I won't even get mad

if you get paint on the table

or the walls.

I want you to play outside

in the mud and 

track it through my house,

so we can slip and slide
on giant soapsuds

as we clean it up.

I want you to splash in puddles,

to blow bubbles in your drink

and hang spoons on your nose

just because it's fun.

I want you to remember

that laughing is the

best feeling ever,

especially the laughter

that comes with love.

When I am an Old Lady!

When I am an old lady I will wear purple, a fancy hat & long johns I hope people will notice me and comment on my hat & not on my "mind." I will talk to anyone who cares to listen. I will tell them about all the men in my life and how they made me happy. I will tell them about my successful children & my grandchildren. When I am an old lady, I will eat all the chocolate I want. If I get fatter, who really cares? I will have secrets & only my grandchildren will hear them. I will listen to the dreams of the little ones who visit. So, a toast to all these ladies in their prime years! May you always enjoy your life. May you enjoy health, laughter & good cheer! May your family surround you with love And, best of all “happiness!”

First Love

Aw, that would be Bobby B.  I was 13 years old, and we lived at McGuire AFB in New Jersey.  I don't remember exactly how we met.  A group of us hung out together in the neighborhood, and Bobby lived across the street with his large family.  He was one of 8 kids, and I  prided myself on being able to name them all.  Let me see, Janie, Bobby, Edward, Danny, Sylvia, hmmmm, that's about as far as I can go.   Janie was his older sister, but they were in the same grade because she had been held back at some point, and she and I were friends first.  Bobby had jet black hair, deep brown eyes  and dark skin.  I thought he was really cute, but I never imagined he would become my boyfriend.  I don't think I was really even thinking about having a boyfriend yet.  Our group consisted of my best friend, Kathy, who lived next door, Janie, David, and a boy named Joey, who both lived across from us, Bobbie, who lived on the other side of us, and probably a few others I've forgotten.  We'd all go to the movies together or gather outside.  The first time we were actually alone was at the movie-Psycho of all things.  I think I had my eyes covered for most of it, and to this day, I'm nervous about showers if I'm alone in the house. I hated that show,  but at some point, Bobby put his arm around me and after the movie asked me to "go steady."  Maybe the fact that he asked me after Psycho should have been my clue as to how that relationship would end up!  No, he didn't try to murder me in the bathroom, and things were actually fun and sort of wonderful for awhile.  He gave me an ID bracelet with his name on it, which back then meant I "belonged" to him.  ICK!  I remember other girls coming up to me and saying, "You're going steady with Bobby B.?  Why would he pick you of all people?"  Seriously, that's what they said, and truthfully, I wondered the same thing because I didn't feel worthy of such a stud muffin.  Haha- just kidding- he was not a stud muffin-just cute.  He was very sweet, and we were inseparable for about 3 months. He even went canoeing with our family.  There's a picture somewhere around here…

Bobby was my first kiss, too-well other than Bruce Lesko in Germany, who I played Spin the Bottle with once, but that didn't really count.  Bobby walked me home one night and at the door, he put his arms around me, pushed my hair off my shoulders and leaned in for a nice tightly closed lip maneuver.  I thought I'd pass out right there, but I managed to gather myself together and go into the house.  Bobby, though, like most boys, wanted more after awhile, and I just wasn't ready to go anywhere else.  

One afternoon after school, I knocked on Kathy's door because we watched "Dark Shadows" together most days.  One of her brothers, answered, and told me Kathy was upstairs and I should go on up.  When I got there, what did I see but Kathy and Bobby making out on the floor!  My heart shattered, I turned and ran.  She was supposed to be my best friend, dammit!  The funny thing is none of us ever talked about it.  Kathy and I didn't speak at all for the rest of the time we lived there, and Bobby moved not too long after that.  I made new friends-real friends, can you say "loyal friends"?  You know friends who didn't go around stealing boyfriends and boyfriends who didn't go around stealing best friends.  Am I bitter?  Haha.

Years later, Jane ran into Bobby in San Marcos where we were both going to SWTSU, and he recognized her and asked about me.  I met him one day at the Whataburger where he was working.  He must have weighed over 200 pounds and was missing a front tooth.  I was 8 months pregnant with Kristinn, and he hinted that he was going to be divorced soon.  I wasn't about to be his wife's Kathy Maloney, so I said, "Buh bye," and never saw him again.  :)  

Taking ALL the Roads

I like to say I don't have regrets, but I imagine we all do, whether we admit them or not. I often find myself daydreaming, "what if I had taken that job at Hyperion Books?" Or "what if I had moved to Europe right after college?" like I wanted to. And I'm surprised when people describe me as successful because I didn't follow any kind of straight line to arrive at where I am now, and I don't describe this as "it." Successful to me would be writing a bestseller.

I went to college to be a journalist after all, and I wound up getting a degree in English because I enjoyed those classes more. I feel like so many of the turns my career and my life have taken have been a result of where my emotions lay at the time. For many years, I stayed with the man who'd become my first husband because I thought he'd make me a stronger, less emotional person. It has taken a long time for me to realize I should embrace who I am and dwell in her.

Part of my catharsis and ever-changing outlook on life involved getting a tattoo on my back a couple of years ago. I had wanted it for years but kept saying I'd get it when I lost that last 10 pounds. Then I realized at 35, I was not going to lose that last 10 pounds, and couldn't I just love who I was physically once and for all? Someone said, "YOU have trouble with self-esteem?" when I was explaining why I chose the artwork that I did. The shock in her voice made me laugh, and made me think, "Yikes, man. Do I come off as arrogant or something?" I overanalyze everything to death, but that's me. That's who I am. And I need to learn to love me more than I do.

I'm always changing. Always dreaming. Always thinking about the next road. And the next. I'd like to spend more time looking ahead and less time analyzing choices I've already made or other people's reactions, especially if they're negative. To Hell with all the negative energy, I say. I want only positive energy in my life. Life is too short not to take ALL the happy roads! :)

The Road Taken

When I was in my 30s, one of my friends commented that she thought I led a "charmed life."  This took me by surprise because, as with most people, I'd had my complaints, my moments of dissatisfaction, my private tragedies.  After all, my family didn't have a lot growing up, my dad died when I was not quite 19, I was a busy mom to three little ones less than four years apart while their father worked at a job that kept him on 24 hour call.  I didn't always love my job and the stresses of dealing with people's problems day in and day out.  I felt over-scheduled, frantic,  and not necessarily like I was doing my best as a human being in all of my many roles.

But then I got it.  I come from a long line of optimists and while we might have our moments of self pity, we don't dwell on them. We don't let them define who we are or live our whole lives based on something bad that happened, a decision we wished we hadn't made, a perceived slight. We look at a situation and figure out how to make the best of it, how to use it in a positive way, how to learn from it and keep going.  We laugh a lot and see the humor in just about any circumstance. We can be inappropriate, even.  :)

Now,  I will not say that I have always been good at this. Especially when I was younger, I had my regrets and my envies.  I remember one single friend who was well educated, a professional with lots of money, a traveler who would send me postcards from all over the planet. My ex would get annoyed and ask "Is she just rubbing it in?"   Part of me thought, "Maybe so!" but I tried to be charitable and think she was making an effort to stay in touch and maybe it was easier away from the job when she was relaxing at another fabulous locale.  :)  But I was envious.  How come she got to spend money any time she wanted and travel to exotic places when we could barely pay the bills?  Should we have made different decisions about our careers, where we lived, how we lived?  What path should we have taken that would have made life easier or more fulfilling?  It wasn't just about money, but about freedom to decide and freedom to live the life we wanted, and the life we wanted to give our kids,  instead of running on that treadmill day after day.  You may say that love is all you need, but there are lots of pressures out there in the real world, aren't there?

But, you know, I realized that she probably didn't care if I was envious. She didn't even know that I was envious. Her life was only making me feel "less than" because I let it. It was one of those little a-ha moments when I decided there was no point in having regrets or thinking about what might have been or wishing for something different. (And as a side note, I later found out that her life was not so grand after all...you could see that coming, couldn't you?)  

Somewhere along the path, most of us realize that everything that happens in our lives, whether we perceive it as good or bad,  creates the person we are working on becoming.  At this point, I am grateful for the learning in all of it and I can't say that I wish I had taken any different road.  Truth be told, I have been fortunate enough to have done everything important that I wanted to do: I got a good education, raised three wonderful daughters, engaged in meaningful work (paid and otherwise), I have great relationships with my husband, family and friends, I experience the pure joy in having grandchildren, get to travel and have new and interesting experiences all the time.  There are many more things I want to do, and I hope I still have plenty of time to do them, but I am not frantic about any of it any more.

I've been graced with wise friends. In my younger years, another told me that the secret to her happiness was a little philosophy called "bloom where you're planted."  Now this was news to me.  What?  You could look around and see all the things you thought were "wrong" and still choose to be happy and productive and involved?  Amazing.   That philosophy saved me, though, again, I am not always good at it.  But what a shift in thinking.  Life will never be perfect, you will  never have everything you once wanted or thought you wanted, there will be mistakes and heartaches and downright awful things that happen sometimes, but you can still choose how you react to it,  decide to live through it, make good decisions, and come out of it okay.  And then others might describe your life as "charmed."  And maybe you will, too.

Robert Frost and Me

I memorized "The Road not Taken" back in the 60s along with two of his other poems. This one always reminds me of a friend who went in the convent right out of high school back in 1949. She chose the “one less traveled by” and stayed there for twenty years. I always wanted to be a teacher and even had ideas of going into the convent myself. You have to realize that I attended twelve years of Catholic school and it was a wonder that more of us didn’t go this route. Of two hundred twenty graduates, only seven went into that profession. Three of us almost went into the Navy…we liked the uniforms. When the time came, we begged off. I always admired classmates who knew exactly what they wanted to do in life but I didn’t have a clue. My sister, Adeline was accepted at Trenton State Teacher’s College with a Physical Education career and that fit her like a T. I had dreams of college and after high school went to work to save for it but that didn’t happen. I used the extra money to buy clothes and meet friends, etc. I often thought if my choices were the right ones and know they were. I married at twenty-one and started a family at twenty-three. I have wonderful children who all seem happy in their careers. I am blessed with many beautiful grandchildren along with their children. There’s a song entitled “If I had my life to live over, I do the same things again.” “I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one “more” traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

A Road not Taken

The Road not Taken

A veterinarian?  A movie star?  Those are two of the paths I thought I'd take when I was a kid.  Animals were my first loves, and there were times when I thought our family dog, Louie, and later, my dog, Pepper, were the only ones who understood me.  Throughout much of my childhood, I was fearful.  I was afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone, afraid of my teachers, afraid to answer the telephone, afraid of sleeping.  I'd lie in bed at night and hear every noise, every breath my sister took (we shared a bed for several of our growing up years).  I'd start to doze and jerk myself awake because I knew if I slept, I would never wake up.  

I remember getting out of bed in the middle of the night and finding Louie, sitting with him and pouring out my heart.  He'd lick my face and I'd pet him until I had the courage to go back to bed.  When Pepper came along, she was my dog, and she slept with me, so my late night ventures ended.  We had other pets along the road, too:  Nibbles, the rabbit, Tuffy, my hamster, a turtle, Friskie the cat-to name a few.  I saved birds who had fallen out of nests and brought home strays.  I never met an animal I didn't love, even going as far as taking bugs out of the house, so nobody would step on them.  Animals helped me get over my debilitating shyness, and by junior high school, I began to find my sense of humor and along with it, freedom from the mostly self imposed box I'd been in up until then.

Before freshman year in high school, I knew veterinary medicine would be my future, but in an instant of horror, my road took a sudden turn.  Standing at the bus stop, my hands in some guy's pocket (I was freezing, and he had one of those big  jackets cowboys often wear with fur in the pockets), a dog ran in front of a car and got hit right there in front of us.  I can still see it.  At night sometimes, I  hear his surprised yelp and then…nothing.  Just like that, he is gone.  I go back in time and relive it in my dreams.  Why hadn't I noticed him before he ran into traffic?  I was too busy flirting with cowboy coat man, I suppose. I cried until I had no more tears, and when I finally stopped, I had a light bulb moment.  I knew then I could not be a veterinarian.  I could not deal with the pain of losing animals over and over again.  Years later, I realize I could have also saved many lives, but at the time, it was more than I could bear, so I gave up my dream.

Around the time I began college, a new dream took root-I had gotten the acting bug.  On stage, I could be anyone.  I could give up that shy, awkward girl who was me and become someone BIG with a big bad mouth and bigger hair.  I could change my walk, the way I talked-I could even suddenly sing with gusto-probably completely out of tune, but I COULD!   Already pregnant with my first child though,  I quickly figured out that Hollywood wasn't likely to come knocking on my door.  So I did the next best thing.  I became a teacher.  And even better, I became a mother.

As a teacher, I was able to use the gifts that I was given.  My compassion and love for non-human animals transferred easily to the classroom. I had a special affinity for the shy and the misfits, the "bad boys," and "alternative" kids.   I got to use the theatrical side of me regularly.  Being a teacher, I think, also made me a better mother, and being a mother made me a better teacher.  Both personas got to learn from the other's mistakes (and I made plenty) and successes.  Most of all, when I look back over the years, my hope is that all of those amazing souls who passed through my classroom knew they were/are loved.

I don't regret any of it.  In the end, the path I took became the right one for me. As Robert Frost wrote all those years ago,   "Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back…"  

I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be: a mother, grandmother, teacher, and a sometimes actor/singer just for the heck of it. And  still, I have miles to go- but that's another poem and maybe another writing prompt on down the road!