The Reluctant ADDult

Start...HERE.

So many times I think we feel that we must go back and correct every mistake we have made from the past.  God only knows if I were to do that, I could never make any progress forward.  In fact, I believe it is ONLY because of all the mistakes I have made that I have finally moved into a place where I feel I am truly forging my own path, that my destiny is more a matter of what I want to do, rather than what just...happens.  There is something to be said, yes, for allowing fate to guide your way, but there is also something to be said for narrowing the parameters of destiny a bit.  There's a big difference between shining a flashlight on a sidewalk in your neighborhood and shining one in the deep woods of Arkansas.  I have been in both places and I have to say that at this particular juncture in my life, being within walking distance of a hot meal and a bath is fine by me.

A new destiny is on the horizon for me soon, though, and I am currently sitting with the fact that I don't know where I am going to be two months from now.  I have clues that it MIGHT be one of two places, but nothing has been set in stone yet.  One is more favorable than the other, although the *other* has its merits.  Patience has been my greatest lesson to learn, though, so I continually must remind myself to BE HERE NOW.  It would be easy to fall prey to thinking that "oh, we are moving in two months so I really don't need to bother with that", rather than Do That Thing Now and enjoy it for the next two months.  Because now is now is now is now, and later will come on its own, soon enough.

Last week I completely rearranged my studio space.  As a working artist (and yee ha, hello creative brain that takes ADD to a whole new level!), it is imperative that my work space be organized by task and materials.  I have about five products that I am producing at this time, so it is all too easy to let things get out of control.  I have learned to break my schedule into one day for each product, cleaning up completely afterward, then moving on to the next product the following day. 

As much as I would like to say I am KILLING IT with this new approach, that has yet to become the truth.  My arch-enemy, the nemesis of my productivity and time-sucking-abyss is...television.  As long as I never turn it on, I am fine.  But once the magnetic pull into the tractor-beam of the Lure of Illumination has occurred, I'm a goner.  And it is the most ridiculous things that compel me to watch, mesmerized.  I have seriously watched "The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford no less than four times...how much more good can I chew out of that movie!?!?!  For some reason the comfort of the familiar transcends the need to elbow my way out of my figurative amniotic sack and push through the discomfort of creative effort, feeling the rawness of possible mistakes, pushing through them, and ultimately creating a new comfort zone. 

The Inertia of ADD.  Overthinking, under-doing.  I must remind myself of the advice I gave my children when they were either hung up on a mistake, or had no idea how to proceed:  Start HERE.  Start now, make one small effort, keep putting one foot in front of the other...do anything, but do something. 

So HERE is where I am starting.  I am putting words on a page, not going back to recount all those God Only Knows pages and pages and pages of mistakes (and thankfully only HE knows some of them!) that preceded this new entry, and I start here, raw and vulnerable.  In saying that, however, I will also say that there have been Great Blessings that I will share as I go along, flecks of gold that were picked up in the light and tucked into my pocket.  That has made it all worthwhile. 

No TV tonight.  Sorry, Harrison, but you and Tommy Lee are going to have to figure it out by yourselves.  I've got my own path to navigate, my own shackles to shed.  I will allow myself to feel the rawness, and to push through it.  Starting here.

On Death and Fried Chicken

Although I live in Texas now, I grew up in the deep South.  Texas is not the south, by the way.  It is Texas, and don't you ever forget it.  Or the Alamo.  Or bar-b-que, margaritas, Longhorns or the fact that Ted Nugent lives here now goddamit and eats at the I-Hop in Waco fully dressed head to toe in cammo gear, ever on the alert to take down any terrorists who may be quietly plotting to plunder, rape and pillage while enjoying a mile-high stack of chocolate chip pancakes.  At least someone is in charge.

I miss the south, though.  It has its own unique flavors and culture.  Sweet tea is a commodity, as are turnip greens, cornbread and fried green tomatoes.  Soul food.  Not so good for the body, but hellacious good for the soul.  I grew up on a steady diet of greens:  mustard greens, turnip greens, collard greens, and on rare occasions, poke salad.  Poke salad grows wild, and the greens are boiled, then drained, then boiled again.  The first boiling produces a poisonous liquid; the second boiling a healthy tonic.  This was probably the only thing that kept my heart beating at times, considering our heart un-healthy diet-- especially when we crumbled our cornbread into buttermilk.  With butter.  Fried cornbread, at that.

Oh, dear Lord; I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

My mother has cancer.  I'm at the age where lots of us are losing parents to old age and disease.  My father, unfortunately, was killed in an accident twenty five years ago, but had he lived I imagine he would have remained healthy.  He was a runner, lifted weights, and was interested in health and nutrition.  Well, except for Big Chik, the mecca for fried chicken.  My dad loved Big Chik.  Fried chicken, cole slaw, french fries, and what he liked to call a "bladder buster" iced tea.  Sweet, of course. 

A few months ago I adopted a vegan diet.  Not just for health reasons, but mostly to torture myself out of a deep concern for environmental issues.  From what I have read lately, meat is not only chocked full of hormones, etc., but also contributes to such lovelies as, oh, say...global warming, Mad Cow disease, E.coli, heart disease, just to name a few.  But the taste!  As a confirmed carnivore, giving up the flesh was hard.  (I have to admit that reading "Skinny Bitch" did wonders to convince me that the deliciousness was not worth the risk.  Damn you, "Skinny Bitch" authors!)

So last weekend I flew to Georgia to be with my [allegedly] dying mother.  I say "allegedly" because  I am a cold, calculating daughter who doesn't give a damn she has pretty much been sick and dying since I was born, so for nearly fifty years I have been on the edge of my seat with this dying business.  After a while it's a bit anticlimactic, if you ask me.  In addition to that, Mommy Dearest has not endeared herself to other family members; out of five children, I am one of two who still speak to her.  And since my brother is teaching English in Asia, you-know-who was elected to fly to Georgia to manage things.  I did what I had to do, like it or not.

Between closing up a home, her business and making trips back and forth to the hospital, keeping up with my vegan diet became less of a priority.  I always figure, if it's too much work,  it's too much trouble.  I had found a wonderful soul food restaurant in town where I ate only [for sure not cooked in animal fats, no way] vegetables, but on this particular day, they were closed.  Mama was having a bad day, and as I wanted to get back to the hospital as soon as possible, I defaulted to the Big Chik, fries and all (I did skip the biscuit...watching my weight, you know.)  I took the food back to the hospital where I proceeded to devour enjoy the comforting flavors from my past.

And enjoy it I did!  I ate the fried skin, the mayo-laden coleslaw, the french fries, and of course, the should-come-with-its-own-catheter sweet tea.  I'm not sure when I have enjoyed a meal more.  It was decadent, it tasted good, and I was somehow able to shelve my guilt while dripping poor, dead chicken juice grease down my arms. 

About halfway through my eating-frenzy, I awoke from my fried-chicken-induced-stupor and took in the surreal scene around me:  HGTV was airing some kind of heart-wrenching make-over show, I--allegedly vegan--was sitting there with a lap full of meat and dairy products (mayo with a bit of coleslaw thrown in), and my mother was laying in her bed, dying of colon cancer.  And the thought that came to mind at that moment was, Please God, please, do not let my mother die before I finish my fried chicken!

I am not a selfish person by nature, and honestly, as difficult as my mother has been for...oh, my ENTIRE LIFE, I still have compassion for her experience.  But I would have been helluvapisstoff if she had chosen that moment to finally give up the ghost.  It was going to be a Sophie's Choice for me at that point, and I was contemplating that, if she DID die before I was finished, would some kind of alarm go off to alert the nurses?  And if it didn't, how guilty would I be if I indeed did go ahead and finish the Soul-Damning Chicken, then go fetch the nurse.  Because if I put the chicken down, it would be down for good.  And that was not a choice I wanted to have to make.

All I can say is:  that was some good fried chicken.  When I have a heart-attack five years from now, I will probably flash back to that scene and WISH TO GOD I HAD EATEN MORE FRIED CHICKEN.  And when the alarm by my bed sounds when my time comes, I hope my daughter is in the middle of something she truly enjoys.  She will have no doubt that I would want her to finish it.  No doubt at all.

 

 

That was it?

Yeah, well, life goes on...

My mother asked me how long it took to die.  I told her it looked like about eighty years.  I was right.  

There's not much you can do for someone at the end aside from making them comfortable.  In spite of the great and divine process of dying, there is also the boredom and physical abominations.  Dying can be messy.  It's not like it is in the movies.  That last breath seems to hang waiting...waiting...maybe another inhalation--no?--was that it?  It seemed like my mother just could not believe that the next breath just would.not.come.

And that was that.

I have heard for a long time that the most important things we collect in our lives are relationships.  I can say without any hesitation now that this is true.  If there was a legacy my mother left, it was that relationships--good or bad--remain after you are gone.  The relationships that she left were shells of possibilities, disappointments and pieced-together quilts of long-held grudges.  I suppose sometimes a legacy is about what you don't want your life to be.  It made me sad to think that those old angers and resentments were with her when she died, but in some ways relieved me to know that whatever breath they used in her life was also extinguished when her life ended.

 

I could not wait to get back to my children, back to the home of my heart.  Back to the warmth and embrace of my loving family, to the breaths we yearn to share with one another, and to the warmth of our acceptance, respect, appreciation and joy we find in sharing a life together.  This life.  These breaths.

 

Make your breaths count.  What lies on that invisible stride of life is everything you create from the first sharp awkward intake of air...until the dark stillness pushes down and down and down until there is no more chance left for more.  Life is all about what we take in, and what we give back in kind.  And in "kind"ness we will find that every breath is the gift.

On Death and Fried Chicken

Although I live in Texas now, I grew up in the deep South.  Texas is not the south, by the way.  It is Texas, and don't you ever forget it.  Or the Alamo.  Or bar-b-que, margaritas, Longhorns or the fact that Ted Nugent lives here now goddamit and eats at the I-Hop in Waco fully dressed head to toe in cammo gear, ever on the alert to take down any terrorists who may be quietly plotting to plunder, rape and pillage while enjoying a mile-high stack of chocolate chip pancakes.  At least someone is in charge.

I miss the south, though.  It has its own unique flavors and culture.  Sweet tea is a commodity, as are turnip greens, cornbread and fried green tomatoes.  Soul food.  Not so good for the body, but hellacious good for the soul.  I grew up on a steady diet of greens:  mustard greens, turnip greens, collard greens, and on rare occasions, poke salad.  Poke salad grows wild, and the greens are boiled, then drained, then boiled again.  The first boiling produces a poisonous liquid; the second boiling a healthy tonic.  This was probably the only thing that kept my heart beating at times, considering our heart un-healthy diet-- especially when we crumbled our cornbread into buttermilk.  With butter.  Fried cornbread, at that.

Oh, dear Lord; I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

My mother has cancer.  I'm at the age where lots of us are losing parents to old age and disease.  My father, unfortunately, was killed in an accident twenty five years ago, but had he lived I imagine he would have remained healthy.  He was a runner, lifted weights, and was interested in health and nutrition.  Well, except for Big Chik, the mecca for fried chicken.  My dad loved Big Chik.  Fried chicken, cole slaw, french fries, and what he liked to call a "bladder buster" iced tea.  Sweet, of course. 

A few months ago I adopted a vegan diet.  Not just for health reasons, but mostly to torture myself out of a deep concern for environmental issues.  From what I have read lately, meat is not only chocked full of hormones, etc., but also contributes to such lovelies as, oh, say...global warming, Mad Cow disease, E.coli, heart disease, just to name a few.  But the taste!  As a confirmed carnivore, giving up the flesh was hard.  (I have to admit that reading "Skinny Bitch" did wonders to convince me that the deliciousness was not worth the risk.  Damn you, "Skinny Bitch" authors!)

So last weekend I flew to Georgia to be with my [allegedly] dying mother.  I say "allegedly" because  I am a cold, calculating daughter who doesn't give a damn she has pretty much been sick and dying since I was born, so for nearly fifty years I have been on the edge of my seat with this dying business.  After a while it's a bit anticlimactic, if you ask me.  In addition to that, Mommy Dearest has not endeared herself to other family members; out of five children, I am one of two who still speak to her.  And since my brother is teaching English in Asia, you-know-who was elected to fly to Georgia to manage things.  I did what I had to do, like it or not.

Between closing up a home, her business and making trips back and forth to the hospital, keeping up with my vegan diet became less of a priority.  I always figure, if it's too much work,  it's too much trouble.  I had found a wonderful soul food restaurant in town where I ate only [for sure not cooked in animal fats, no way] vegetables, but on this particular day, they were closed.  Mama was having a bad day, and as I wanted to get back to the hospital as soon as possible, I defaulted to the Big Chik, fries and all (I did skip the biscuit...watching my weight, you know.)  I took the food back to the hospital where I proceeded to devour enjoy the comforting flavors from my past.

And enjoy it I did!  I ate the fried skin, the mayo-laden coleslaw, the french fries, and of course, the should-come-with-its-own-catheter sweet tea.  I'm not sure when I have enjoyed a meal more.  It was decadent, it tasted good, and I was somehow able to shelve my guilt while dripping poor, dead chicken juice grease down my arms. 

About halfway through my eating-frenzy, I awoke from my fried-chicken-induced-stupor and took in the surreal scene around me:  HGTV was airing some kind of heart-wrenching make-over show, I--allegedly vegan--was sitting there with a lap full of meat and dairy products (mayo with a bit of coleslaw thrown in), and my mother was laying in her bed, dying of colon cancer.  And the thought that came to mind at that moment was, Please God, please, do not let my mother die before I finish my fried chicken!

I am not a selfish person by nature, and honestly, as difficult as my mother has been for...oh, my ENTIRE LIFE, I still have compassion for her experience.  But I would have been helluvapisstoff if she had chosen that moment to finally give up the ghost.  It was going to be a Sophie's Choice for me at that point, and I was contemplating that, if she DID die before I was finished, would some kind of alarm go off to alert the nurses?  And if it didn't, how guilty would I be if I indeed did go ahead and finish the Soul-Damning Chicken, then go fetch the nurse.  Because if I put the chicken down, it would be down for good.  And that was not a choice I wanted to have to make.

All I can say is:  that was some good fried chicken.  When I have a heart-attack five years from now, I will probably flash back to that scene and WISH TO GOD I HAD EATEN MORE FRIED CHICKEN.  And when the alarm by my bed sounds when my time comes, I hope my daughter is in the middle of something she truly enjoys.  She will have no doubt that I would want her to finish it.  No doubt at all.