Pippin

Well, we finally did it. We adopted a kitten on Saturday. His name is Pippin. (I chose the name. My kids immediately recognized the reference. Some others, on the other hand, did not. "Scotty Pippin?" one boy asked. No, no. We are literary, here, in our house, not sports fans.)

Anyway, he is sweet and cute and feisty and purry and everything a kitten should be. I have enjoyed bonding with him. More, though, I have enjoyed the fantastic high of seeing my little boys bond with him. Each has had his own way. There's Alex, quiet, disappearing into Pippin's room every chance he gets, sitting quietly in a corner while the kitten makes his way to him, which he always does. Then there's Ben, eagerly seeking him and playing with him, probably the most tender-hearted, coming to tell me with tears in his eyes how sad and lonely Pippin looked when he had to be shut in the room alone at night. Jon makes shy advances and quick retreats. Peter is terrified of him but, from across the room, speaks to him as if to a baby, repeating in a high voice whatever he hears me or Alex say to the cat.

From Alex: "Mom, will we get Pippin sealed to our family?"

Oh, this, THIS is why children should have pets. I can actually hear their hearts growing, stretching, softening. Love, love, my children--love with all your might!

Am I, or am I not, a writer?

It bugs me that I am always so intent on deciding whether or not I am going to invest in exploring myself as a writer. Why can’t I just write, or not, as I feel like it? Why do I always have to analyze, and DECIDE—or try to—whether or not I am a “writer”?

Maybe because it IS an investment. It takes time and, yes, money. How can I justify putting my time and money into writing when these things could be spent on soccer lessons for the kids, say, or a trip to Disneyland (well, over time, anyway)?

Which is why I feel pressure to succeed. If I succeed (and the definition of success is up for debate), then I can claim that I have talent. And, of course, if I have Talent, then I am justified in the investment because we are commanded, after all, not to hide our candles under bushels.

But that’s just so much pressure. There’s the pressure to be good, so that I can justify the time and money it took to produce, and then there’s the pressure to SHARE what I’ve done. Two problems, then: 1) How do I become good without investing some time in practicing (and some of that practice is going to be lousy)? How much time to I give myself being not-yet-good in the hopes that I will become good before I give up and decide I might not be good after all? And 2) How do I quit thinking about that need to SHARE and get some privacy in my mind to explore what I really have to say? I am always so very concerned with audience, always planning on sharing things eventually. And that is stilting to the creation of art. It is as if I am making little deals with God: “Make this poem/essay/story turn out well, and I will use it to build up the kingdom.” So then, whenever I am tempted to write anything that might not build up the kingdom—might hurt feelings, or (perish the thought) give someone the wrong impression or (worst of all) possibly lead someone AWAY from the kingdom, I hesitate to write it. And hesitation impairs me. My work is shallow because I worry about these things. It will never be truly great if I do not allow the possibility of pain, misinterpretation and all to come into what I’m doing.

By avoiding risk I am condemning myself to fluff. I might possibly entertain, but I will never really move people.

And look, here I am again talking about moving people as my goal. Can’t I just write for the joy of it? Why do I need to have an altruistic goal? Well, as I said above, to justify it. Because, although I don’t think it is wrong to have a hobby just for the joy of it, with no value for anyone but myself, I’m not exactly sure that writing is all that joyous to me, or good for me.

But maybe it could be, if I could someday really give myself free rein to write WHATEVER I wanted, whenever I wanted it, with no thought of audience. I don’t know. I’ll have to think about this.

I DO know that I get joy out of producing a good poem that really says what I want to do. So maybe I WOULD do it just for myself.

Hmmmm. I will ponder this some more . . .

Catherine Thomas on Relationships

Here are my favorite quotes (so far) from “Women, Priesthood, and At-One-Ment” in _Spiritual Lightening_ by M. Catherine Thomas (SLC: Bookcraft, 1996). Thanks to Kathy S. for sharing this book with me.

“As to perfecting ourselves in a relationship, it is easy for us to live for a good many years on the assumption that we have a right to be satisfied by life events and by the people in our lives. This is a precept of man. If we continue all the way through this life with that assumption, we will have failed to learn what we came here to learn and will have failed to develop some personal essentials. We will never obtain the essential divine nature and can never be exalted until we know and practice the truth. One important truth is that our husbands, our wives, and our children were not given to us to satisfy us, and nor were many of the most important events of our lives. To the world, love is a relationship in which the parties involved satisfy each other enough that they can call that relationship ‘love.’ But this is not love at all—it is just self-serving.
“We can tell that our love is often based on the degree to which another person satisfies us: If they don’t satisfy us, we criticize them. It seems to me that most criticism is saying, ‘In these ways, this person does not satisfy my expectations as to what he should be.’ But our expectations are a function of the finite mind, the telestial and selfish mind, not the mind of God. . .
"We stand in a sacred relationship to the people in our lives, especially family, because they are not there by chance. The people in our lives were placed there not only for us to enjoy but also to cross us and to dissatisfy us from time to time so that we can learn that love is not a matter of personal satisfaction but a going out of our hearts to empathize with, to understand, and to try to bless the other, giving up the demand of the natural man for satisfaction—to love the other, to forgive the other, to cease to demand that the other satisfy us, and to seek to be able to bless that person. Relationships were given to us to develop us in love.” (pp 55-56)

“Grace is enabling or strengthening power given to another who can’t provide it for himself—but needs it.” (p. 57)

Catherine Thomas was talking here about spouses. And it has been a wonderful thought-provoker to me, in terms of my marriage. But I also can't help thinking about it as it relates to my children. Too often I criticize my children because they don't satisfy me. (I justify it by saying that it is my job to "fix" them--because if I don't, who will? It's my job as their parent.) I think I have been getting too self-serving about how I treat my kids. I need to remember that most of what they do is not my business.

There are only two things that are my business when it comes to my kids:

I must teach them the gospel.
I must be a good example.

Other than that, it's all up to them, isn't it?

I have been too selfish and WAY too impatient with them. I hope they'll forgive me.

Ex-es

A few weeks ago I received a letter from my ex-fiance. He's the guy that I jilted just three weeks before the big day. He had written because, he said, he had been "cleaning stuff out," and had come across the letters I had given him when we were engaged. These were letters I had written as a sentimental teenager "to my future husband." He thought that I might like to keep them, so he was kindly returning them.

All of the letters had been opened.

Now, I'm sure that while we were engaged, I gave them to him and we opened and laughed about them together.

Laughed, because they were AWFUL. Gushy, silly, boy-crazy awful.

So I'm looking down at his familiar handwriting and the pile of the letters (open) I had written once and I am feeling major mixed emotions:

-glad that I'm not that same silly girl who wrote those things
-glad that I was able to get out of that engagement before I made my mistake bigger
-glad that my husband is cool with the fact that I had been both of those people (the teen and the mistaken fiance) before I was ready for him
-embarrassed to high heaven that I had ever written those letters and then had the nerve to give them to a guy I wasn't married to . . . and also that he had read them, and probably re-read them, and probably shared them with his wife, before sending them on
-glad to hear from him again, just because I'm always curious.

I am always very curious about what has happened to my ex-es. I have a theory that in the next life, I will be able to sit down with each one of them on a heavenly park bench, without any of the barriers in the way, and discuss what really happened.

I have had my heart broken. I have broken some hearts. I am convinced that I ended up with the best guy for me (pretty good to still be sure of that after fourteen years), but I still feel a lot of love for these other guys, and I wish we could still have connections with each other, somehow.

How can you convince someone whose heart you broke that you still love him, and always will? Back then, I still loved them. Now, I still do. But I don't think I could ever make them understand that--at least in this life. But I hope to someday.

I'm pretty sure that three of my favorite guys (whose hearts I broke) are still single. And it's not like there were that many. Just that most of them went on to NOT marry. (I hope that wasn't my fault . . . ) Maybe it makes it easier to keep being fond of them because they didn't marry. Like they are somehow still mine, or my fan club or something.

Anyway, it's weird that our hearts have so much room in them. I hope that there will be a way in the next life to love as many people as we want, and just be happy all together. (While still remaining happily married to the best one.)

Shoes . . . and Fashion . . . and Spirituality

Shoes
Am I really the only woman under fifty whose feet hurt? My new, custom-made insoles do wonders for me, but they mean that I have to wear sneakers everywhere. And I’m beginning to notice that NO ONE wears sneakers. Cute sandals (even in winter). Cute little skinny boots. But I am the only person running around in big, clunky white sneakers (the kind I begged my parents to buy me back in junior high—that you would wear with little pom-pom socks and a big-handled rubber comb in your back pocket). So is everyone wincing with pain or am I just old before my time? Couldn't we all just decide together that comfortable shoes are fashionable?

Fashion in General
And speaking of shoes, I know I am the least fashionable person in my ward. I know this because everyone else’s clothes are so ugly.

I remember when I was in junior high and I saw people who were still stuck in the 70’s. I felt so sorry for the poor nerds, with their center-parted hair and no bangs and wide-legged pants. I remember even pointing out one “nerd” to my cousin and being shocked to the core when she responded to me, “That isn’t very nice, Darlene. That person is a child of God, too.” (That brings up the subject of “What People are Ready For,” which I will discuss below.) I wasn’t really laughing at the poor woman, just feeling sorry for her inability to realize which decade we were in.

I know I have become that woman. I know that the young people can look at me and tell I grew up in the 80’s. I know because when I go shopping for clothes I can’t find anything that looks attractive to me. These wide legs! These brown colors! It's so--so 70's! When I get dressed for something important (like that paper I presented last week), I don't know what to choose because I am completely at sea about whether something is in style or not. The really scary thing is I am beginning not to care. Someone help me before it is too late!

What People are Ready For
So, when my cousin said that to me, I didn’t feel chastised, nor sorry. I just thought my cousin was weird. I thought she was actually kind of nerdy herself and out of touch. Like my friend who decorated her locker with pictures of Jesus. Just a little “out there,” you know?

But I saw a different side to that one day when someone asked me why I don’t listen to my 80’s modern rock music anymore—well, hardly any of it. I tried to explain to him how I had gone through a sort of conversion to the Spirit during college and had thrown out all of the music that I felt was offensive to the Spirit. It was extra hard to explain it to him because I knew that he still listened to most of the stuff I had decided was offensive, and that by explaining this to him I must appear as if I were judging him.

And, of course, I knew I looked kind of nerdy to him. Like a little “out there.” (I mean, more than just because my clothes were so desperately out of fashion.) For that reason--that I know it makes me look like a kook, I rarely tell people exactly how little TV and movies I can tolerate.

The funny thing is, if someone had preached to me back when I was a teenager about the music I was listening to, or the movies and TV I was watching, I would not only have thought them nerdy, I would have been offended. I NEVER would have felt corrected and then changed my behavior. I was too proud, maybe, or possibly just simply NOT THERE YET. I wasn’t ready.

I’m really glad to be able to look back and see how the Spirit has led me along. I have made adjustments when they were right for me. That gives me a lot of hope about my kids. Hopefully when they start listening to music I don’t like or can’t tolerate, I will be able to remember that they will grow up and someday hear the whisperings of the Spirit about what they are ready for.

That’s what’s a little scary about things like Relief Society lessons, where we all sit around and tell each other ways we can be even more and more righteous (fast twice a month! go to the temple weekly! no TV/homework/cooking on Sundays! no sugar!). Some people are ready for things; some are not. Some are prompted about things; some are not. Pushing our promptings on others never helps them.

What does, then?

Hmmmm. That’s worth another post, another day.

Mopping

Somebody, please, tell me how to mop. I have HAD IT with this filthy floor.

I can’t believe that I am thirty-five and I still don’t feel I know how to mop. Yes, I mopped for my parents once in a while when I was young. Yes, I worked at the 49th Street Galleria and mopped that sticky floor in Orange Julius every night at closing. Yes, I have mopped, well, at least once a month, every since I was married. (I know some women would die of shock that I can’t claim to have done it much more often than that.) But I still haven’t figured it out. How do people DO it?

I finally marched into the Don Aslett store and asked the employees. First of all, they didn’t even agree with each other, and argued for a while over which cleaner I needed. Then they got off on this squeegee thing. Right. Like I’m really going to do that. I have to admit, though, that the idea is the only one that makes sense so far because it is the only one that involves actually picking the dirty water up off of the floor and putting it somewhere else entirely. Every other method makes me feel like I am just slopping the dirt around.

My friend felt sorry for me and actually gave me her Swifter. Nice thought but who has the money to buy all the little pads? And besides, the thing glides right over my grout and doesn’t even touch the dirt down in there.

Then there’s the people who say you have to mop once to clean and a second time to rinse. (Of course, the people who have told me that are all empty-nesters with too much time on their hands.) Right. Listen, honey, we’re lucky to get that once done around here.

One time I was so stressed about the dirty floor but it was already dinner time on Saturday and I knew it was the thing to send me over the edge into insanity, emotionally, if I were to get out the bucket right then. I gathered all of the guys up and said, “Listen, this floor is horribly dirty and I should be mopping it right now, but I JUST CAN’T DO IT TODAY!!!!! Does anybody care if it goes another week?” Of course, no one did. (In another few years I’ll just assign it to one of them.)

So if no one cares but me whether it is clean or dirty, why don’t I just give up and let it be dirty?

Well, I really hate it when my shoe comes off while I’m walking across the floor because it is stuck in the orange juice—know what I mean?

There’s got to be another way to do this.
If I ever build a house I’m going to put a drain in the middle of the kitchen—maybe under the table, and install a hose. And troughs around the edges. Yeah, that would work.

Beauty

What is it with beauty, anyway? It’s so hard to get a grasp on this. God put it in us to love beauty, to respond to it. It can’t be wrong to want to BE beautiful, too, can it? And yet—and yet it makes me so self-centered to think about whether or not I’m beautiful.

I see that this is worth a longer meditation sometime.

Hair

I hate my hair. Hating my hair takes up at least a part of every day. I don’t think this is healthy. I think that I should have dealt with this a long time ago. I should either have developed some charitable love for the poor stuff, or resigned myself to hating it and put it out of my mind. But it is still there, taking my attention, zapping my strength and my concentration.

My husband claims he loves my hair. That’s awfully nice of him. And, although I have instructed him carefully to lie anytime he thinks I look anything less than gorgeous, I actually believe that he’s telling the truth when he says he likes it. But he’s a guy. (Am I implying here that his opinion doesn’t count, and that I dress only for girls? Hope not.) And he doesn’t understand that if you wear your hair long, it is supposed to be thick and straight and glossy, or thick and curly and glossy. Not wispy and fly-away and stringy.

I am only wearing it long for him. Not even long—just “long-ish,” since, being so wispy, it’s actually hard to tell where, exactly, it ends. And it is so think that I have to use those little orthodontic rubber bands when I want to put it in a ponytail. My ponytail, when wet, looks like one piece of spaghetti. Really.

In the next life, I have already informed my sweetheart, I will have long, thick, curly hair. He’s not sure he wants that, since, as he claims, he likes it already “just the way it is.” I think he’s crazy. However, when I think about him changing in the next life, I see what he means. I love him just the way he is, and anything different would be less him, less the person I love.

But I imagine that God has something wonderful in store for all of us. I imagine that he can make me better but even more myself, and R better and even more himself. I think that, whether my hair changes or not, I will be very happy with the way I look in the next life. Maybe it will be because I have become a person who cares a lot less about appearances—but I prefer to believe that it will be because I will be beautiful.

Blog about Blogs

I had just about made up my mind to erase this blog. I just don’t like the concept of being so self-conscious. I figure, if I have something to say that is worth saying really well and is meant to be said in public, I should probably really craft it and then put it into one of my poems or stories. Or, if it’s that I want to work through something by writing it out, I should just put it in my journal. What’s with displaying it for everyone? It makes me even more self-conscious than I already am, that feeling that I’m always in a movie. “Here is what the voice-over would say right now. And this is the kind of music there would be in the background . . .” And who is it that I’m thinking might ever care to read this? Probably if I linked to it from the other places I post, people might check it out out of curiosity. But I’m not sure I want to be judged by it.

That’s it—that’s what bugs me about blogs. It’s like everyone who does one is keeping it so that they have something public to be judged by. So that they can have some control over the impression they make. They craft a persona. But I imagine that although you can’t take everything in a blog as an accurate definition of its creator, I guess you can learn a lot about the person just by what they decide to include, or not include. You can at least tell what about them they prefer to project, if nothing else.

Meanwhile, I haven’t told a living soul (except R) that I have this blog. So for now I am just musing in the dark to myself.

Superstitious Snapshots

I have to confess to being superstitious. It only shows up once in a while, like refusing to announce, "Peter is potty-trained," because I don't want to jinx it.

But one of the ways that I've found myself being superstitious is this little trick I do that I call taking "mind snapshots." It started one day after I had heard YET AGAIN an older lady (or man), looking at my kids running around my knees wreaking havoc, say,"Oh, honey, these are the good days. Don't wish them away! Before too long you'll look back and wish you could come back to this time!" Which, by the way, I hate. What a horrible thing to tell someone: "It's downhill from here!" But even harder to hear when you are a young mom, frazzled and exhausted. Yeah, yeah. They're cute. I know they are--I've seen them asleep. But this is HARD. I refuse to forget that this is hard. And I will never, ever say that to another young mother when I am well past this stage and probably sleeping all the way through, every night.

Anyway, I heard this little speech one too many times. And after watching home movies of the kids two years ago and realizing that THOSE little kids were gone now--where did they go?--I decided that there was probably at least a little truth to it. So I decided to try to become more conscious, as the days go by. I'm going to make sure that I don't miss all this and look back and say, "Where did it go?" I want to look back and know that I KNOW where it went. I want to know I was THERE for it. I want to imprint on my mind all of those sweet little moments just to prove to myself that I'm not missing them.

So I've started taking snapshots.

It starts with prayer. I ask God to help me notice those little moments (the ones I will miss most later) WHILE they are happening. And He has. I'll feel a little nudge: "Psssst. Darlene. Heads up." And I'll become aware that I'm there, in the moment, and experiencing joy with these little guys. And I'll take a little mental snapshot. "There. That's the moment I want to grab."

If I have enough of them, I'll change into a person who remembers joy, who has no regrets, and also, hopefully, somehow, someone who is able to feel joy as it happens and not just in retrospect. I love the scripture that talks about the righteous having a "perfect knowledge of their enjoyment." That's my goal. And, hopefully, taking these little snapshots will, like knocking on wood, keep me missing out on the good stuff.