To My Kids: An Apology

I know, over the years, you have felt it. You have been the brunt of my jokes. You have been the punchline in my dark comedy. I have leveraged the overwhelm of single-momming four wild kids into the funny, pitiful story of a girl who had other plans that got hijacked by motherhood. I know you have felt this. I want you to to know, it’s not you, it’s me.

I want you to know that every complaint, every poorly-laid quip about parenting and how it should be avoided at all cost - it wasn’t about YOU. It wasn’t because you were born that I suffer or have felt a victim ever since (because I don’t), even though, as I am learning, that is what your adolescent minds and hearts received from me. I am so deeply sorry for this and the rejection you have felt. The argument I have contended over the last 25 years is not with you four girls, who are among the best and brightest human beings I have ever known. The argument is with myself. My own inadequacies.

When I “joke” about the problem of parenting, make no mistake, YOU were never the problem, I was. I was unequal to the task that was given to me, or that’s how I have always felt. I was unprepared, ill-quipped and, in my own mind, not built for good parenting. You are the redemption of my failures. You four ARE my Amor Fati. You are the fate that I love. The Surprise of my Life.

But parenting equals liability. As I have struggled through life and the various pains and tribulations, warring through seasons, years, epochs of dark depression, the one thought that chases me relentlessly is that I have brought four other souls into this place of perpetual torment. I lose sight of joy and I feel immense guilt for subjecting the four of you to this world of pain. None of you asked to be here, and I carelessly and selfishly brought you here with nothing to offer you, no comfort, no control, no promise of good days. This sense of helplessness has overwhelmed me for years.

As I look forward to the impending birth of my first grandson, the sense washes over me again. Another generation. Another human spirit. Here, in this dark world, because of me. This has triggered panic in me. I “joke” about not wanting to be a grandma, but in reality, I can’t bear the thought of subjecting another generation to the pain and misery of life, being helpless to protect him or shelter him from the inevitable hurt he will endure. My distaste for parenting (and grandparenting) has everything to do with my lack of control over the world and nothing to do with you. This is what parenting looks like with untreated mental health issues. If you learn anything from me, learn to find the help you need.

It isn’t that parenting is so hard - on the contrary, you four girls were the best and easiest kids to raise. You were all wise beyond your years, smart, curious, everything you needed to be in order to survive life with a mother like me. It isn’t really that children are so yuck - even thought I pretend they are. It’s the liability they represent. The burden of responsibility on me as a parent, as a grandparent, to offer some shelter from the storm of life… when I can barely keep my own head above water.

I was a terrible parent in my inability to identify and get the help I needed to raise you without harm. In fact, my coping mechanisms caused more damage to your developing spirits. My sense of despair and inadequacy actually became the pain that I felt so helpless in protecting you from. I have learned, as I grow older and (questionably) wiser, that my resistance to taking responsibility for the danger you were subjected to became the danger itself.

This is what humans do. We cause suffering in our avoidance of it. Teaching you by example the ability to embrace life exactly as it is, in the very moment, and walk in it with humility, curiosity and gratitude - this would have done far more to protect you from the storms of life than my feeble attempts at shirking responsibility.

So I’m asking you to forgive me, not for my inadequacies and failures, but for my lack of willingness to own them. Instead I spent so many years bucking against my fault in your existence. I was defensive. I was like a cornered animal with no out, and you have the scars to prove it. I am sorry. I am sorry for making you the brunt of my coping mechanisms. I am grateful that you have all survived (and if you survived me as a parent, I am confident you can survive anything) and that you are the brilliant people you are in spite of me and my immaturity. I am so thankful that I have the privilege of knowing you and I hope, being friends with all of you as our lives move forward.

I cannot control or protect or hide any of you, or my new grandson, from the hurts of this world, but I can live in it with you all and weather the storms that come. I cannot undo the past, but I can commit to this. I should have been doing that with you all along.

P.S. Can we still settle on a title other than Grandma?

It's Not in My Head

I was born for this. Sunshine. It is impossible to understate the healing power that the wind and warm and sunlight has imposed upon my soul. It’s easy to discount depression that creeps in gradually like a mold and wraps itself around my mind and heart in the darkness of winter, but feeling it fall away like a heavy coat after a couple of days in the sun removes all doubt that it is a very real thing. I’ve been hidden away for months, pushing through the things I have to do to get by, coping by preserving the little energy I could scrape up to do the bare minimum at work and at home, cutting off most of my relationships because there’s just. nothing. left. It’s like my battery was completely zapped and the only teeny little hints of recharge came with hours nestled into my couch blankets with as many dogs as possible.

And then I step into the sunlight in Mexico and the heaviness lifts. The sadness fades. I can’t remember what it is about life that I hate so much… it’s so beautiful. Even with no running water or towels or waiting in lines for hours… it’s no big deal. I feel happy again. I feel capable again. I feel energized again. I feel ALIVE again.

 Every winter it seems to get worse for me and this year has been overwhelming. There’s a combination of contributing factors for sure, but all of them seem more manageable in the sunlight. I can throw my pack on and trudge happily for miles in the sunshine, where I could barely stumble a half mile down the trail at home in the cold and dark. Everything feels doable. The headaches that had persisted daily since I had COVID are gone. My endless appetite for garbage comfort food is almost entirely gone (almost). I WANT to get out of bed and see what is going on outside. I haven’t experienced that since last October, or maybe longer. I have words to write, I feel interested in life again – the lack of these over the winter are the cause for most alarm, it’s easy for me to start questioning why I even exist when there are no words for me to put on paper and my curiosity about life goes dormant. I can’t afford those losses anymore. It’s time to live in the sunlight.

No Man is a Failure...

I used to have friends. I had a lot. In fact, if I log back into Facebook I have thousands. But do I really?

Mostly now I have dogs. I have some family that checks in on me from time to time. I can go 48 hours without hearing from a single person… except the delivery guy from Red Dragon (did you know you can add doggie treats to your online order on their app???).

I have a comfortable house. Two, actually. A car that runs consistently. I have more sh*t than I know what to do with (expect a yard sale this spring). But do I have friends? No tribe. No band of compadres. What happened? Did I trade them all for a man who left me in the dust? Or did I just grow away from them, from the high school sports games and internal gossip where I was easily the subject of scandal due to my tumultuous dating status and history of poor choices. I’ve got my vet boys, and I love them dearly. But I’m more like a den mother than one of the gang. Not really how I envisioned that going. I’ve got my fire tribe but they’re in hibernation. Weird how family can be seasonal.

So I have dogs. Am I a failure?

I checked out of social media for the month of January. All social media. Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Snapchat (which proved to be problematic since it’s the only way my youngest communicates). Do you know what I have missed the most about all of it? Absolutely nothing. Not a thing. Sometimes I think it would be nice to check Facebook marketplace for something I need for the house or because I have sh*t to sell, and then I remember the part where I have to coordinate a meet up with an actual person and I change my mind post haste. I don’t miss the petty updates and political posturing. I don’t even miss the memes (I get plenty of those in the Team TEDD chat). But I have realized that all those apps filled a void in my life, a space that would normally be filled with real people and relationships. A space that sits empty now. Not a hopeful kind of empty, like I will find the ones to fill it, just a knowing, content empty. Like this is who I am now. I live with a space inside of me. A hollowness. I don’t expect to find a tribe. I’ve looked - I’ve tried to find a pub to frequent, or a few girls to glom on to, nothing clicks. Maybe I am too old to conform to a groove that isn’t mine. I’m not saying that it’s a total rule out situation, I’m just saying, like romantic love, I am not convinced it’s in the cards for me to every really belong somewhere, to someone, in a tribe. I used to think not belonging would kill me, and in some ways maybe it has, but no matter how lifeless I feel inside, life goes on, and I continue to exist.

Am I a failure? I don’t feel like I’ve failed. In some ways I feel accomplished. Maybe I have done what I was here to do. Maybe the rest is just a coast until the finish line, whenever that is. The idea of not focusing on the outcome comes at a convenient time, when I can’t really even imagine an outcome. I am just here. Day by day. Passing time. Taking up space. With dogs.

The Shame of COVID-19

It’s been almost exactly two years since this virus landed in Washington State. Two years of mayhem and political catastrophe. Two years of death and illness. Two years of denial and conspiracy theories. Two years of propaganda, political bullying and manipulation. Worldwide, 5.3 million people have died of COVID-19, according to today’s statistics. 363 million people have been infected around the globe. These numbers can be argued in both directions, skewed by testing failures, data gaps in underreported countries, and much more, but the impact has been immense.

The COVID-19 war in the United States, and around much of the world, has become such a frenzy of misinformation, extreme language and self-righteous posturing on all sides that no one knows who to trust anymore. The CDC and the WHO and local Health Jurisdictions can’t agree on protocols and every political pundit has attempted to use the pandemic to serve their best interests.

In the U.S., to contract COVID-19 is an indicator of your status as a human being. The elite see themselves as above infection. Many of my friends on the conservative side of the spectrum who have had the virus have been sneaking around, trying to avoid detection, claiming any bug and resisting tests to avoid being counted as a statistic. On the left, any friends who contract the disease blame the dirty unvaccinated right for their exposure, not understanding why their religious observance of mask wearing and social avoidance didn’t work, forgetting perhaps that we are dealing with one of the most contagious, easily spread illnesses of our age.

I tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday, January 23rd. In a nod to the utter nonsense and confusion of testing standards, I took two rapid tests, on Friday the 21st and Saturday the 22nd, both of which were negative. Sunday, my symptoms were worse (FYI I had two doses of the Moderna Vaccine in April of 2021), and I refused to accept that I didn’t have COVID, based on how I was feeling, so I tested again, twice. Both were positive. Maybe it’s the Omicron variant, which doesn’t show as early on some tests. Maybe the first tests were bad, somehow, even though they came from different boxes. These inconsistent test results are a universal problem, as witnessed by many of my friends and family. That we are basing so much of our social behavior on such unreliable science is telling of the world we live in right now.

It’s weird that I feel like I should be ashamed that I caught COVID-19. IT’S A FECKING PANDEMIC. More that 20% of the world population has gotten it. To avoid it is basically to swear off life and human interaction. I have no idea where I got it. Someone I know was around someone else who had it, but my contact was with someone who had it months ago and had no symptoms. I flew on multiple airplanes where I was reminded by an attendant to put my mask back in place BETWEEN SIPS OF MY DRINK because the person I was sitting next to for several hours would be safer… I ate in restaurants in Minnesota and Nevada and a variety of different airports where I was allowed to take my mask off while eating but not while walking to the bathroom… I am vaccinated. I should be protected…. oh but wait, it wears off. Ok, so I could have gotten a booster and my symptoms would have been milder. I followed the rules… and I got sick.

As soon as I got a positive test - actually before, when I started feeling crappy, I cut off contact with other people as much as possible. Traveling home with a scratchy throat and a negative test, I never took my mask down, even for a sip (even though I have been ASSURED that vaccinated people can’t spread the bug). I haven’t left my house except to have someone at Safeway stuff groceries in the back of my car. I’ve had UberEats and InstaCart and Amazon show up on my doorstep. We’ve invented some spectacular ways to avoid human contact and I am kind of a fan, I am not gonna lie.

5.63 million people have died worldwide. The Spanish Flu at the beginning of the 20th Century killed 50 million. The Black Plague is estimated to have killed 500 Million people. History tells us we’re getting better at this disease thing, slowly but surely. Even so, nearly 6 million people is a lot. It’s a lot of grandparents and parents and friends and relations. It’s not as much as the 17.9 million people that die every year of cardiovascular disease, but it’s still a lot - and the kicker is probably that some of these deaths are preventable.

According to the CDC, unvaccinated people were 13.9 times more likely to be infected with COVID-19 and 53.2 times more likely to die from the disease than vaccinated people during October and November of 2021. These statistics wavered slightly with Omicron in December, as numbers demonstrated that the vaccine was less effective against the new strain, and while Omicron infections were generally less severe, vaccination provided less protection, especially among the elderly.

The WHO and the CDC disagree fundamentally about the global distribution of vaccines, while “first world” countries are pushing third and even fourth rounds of boosters, some developing nations have yet to see their first dose of vaccine. My conservative friends are happy to share their state-mandated vaccine doses with countries where healthcare and preventative medicine is more challenging than here. They’re content to take their chances with black market Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine. Meanwhile my more liberal friends have given me an “every man for himself” speech on their way to get booster shots to protect them in their fortified hiding spaces away from germ-ridden civilization. Is there no middle ground? Is there the common sense of getting vaccinated, observing good hygiene and getting back to life? Why are we ashamed of the human frailty of illness? It is our frailty that makes us human. It’s our ability to die that makes life so precious. And yet we forego life to protect it.

I am not embarrassed that I got COVID. I’m a little bit relieved to a) finally quit wondering when it would hit and b) hope to have better immunity on top of my “fully vaccinated but unboosted” status. I would not wish the virus on any of my friends or relations, especially the ones who are truly afraid of it, but the choice to avoid it in perpetuity is up to them. I do not choose that path. I chose to keep doing life and the widespread virus caught me. Because I am human. Because my immune system can only do so much. Because this is life. I’m not saying my approach is better than hydroxychloroquine or endless boosters. I am just saying we are constantly learning, as a species, to live with and defeat these diseases. COVID-19 isn’t going away, like my sense of smell did, suddenly and mysteriously. We’ll be living with it for some time to come. We will suffer more loss, we always will, every year and every month and every day, from COVID or some other insidious monster.

I did what made sense to me. I got vaccinated. I wore a mask when asked, mostly. I have isolated while sick. I understood the risks of my behavior and made my choices. It’s all any of us can do. Why we are judging each other for different choices is beyond me. Was I selfish for traveling and exposing myself to disease somewhere along the way? Am I a brainless follower for getting vaccinated? And who says so?

I don’t pretend to have answers that even the CDC and the WHO and most doctors can’t come up with definitively. I got vaccinated. I got sick. I am getting better. I have no regrets. I have (to my knowledge) not exposed anyone else. I’ve weathered two rounds of COVID with my offspring who struggled to isolate successfully in shared houses with jobs and school they can’t afford to miss. It’s easy for those of us in more comfortable circumstances to judge the ones who might show up for work with runny noses, but I’ve lived the life of catastrophe that missing one or ten days of work can bring. This pandemic will continue to cause the financial ruin of families already struggling to survive while the middle class sits in safe, comfortable isolation, working remotely, judging the sniffling masses. There are no clean answers, and in some ways, the long term effects of this illness haven’t even started to set in.

It’s time to withhold judgement and extend compassion. It’s time to get over the elitist mentality that this worldwide disease is avoidable or that catching it has something to do with your value as a human being. Frontline, “essential” workings ringing up groceries and serving meals are at the greatest risk with no option to work from home, and yet the left calls this a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” I am vaccinated. It’s a pandemic of the living. It’s also time to stop denying that it’s deadly. Is death preventable? Yes, probably, in many cases. Always? No. But we left the station of disease containment months and months ago and it’s like we can’t accept that fact. We should have been looking at management strategies and quit pretending we could contain it a long time ago.

I’ve retreated into total avoidance of human contact over the last several months and it’s largely due to this disease. Not because I am afraid of getting it, quite the contrary. I am happy to have finally caught it. But I can’t abide the fear on one side and the denial on the other. Both extremes anger me. I have no tolerance for either anymore. So I sit here, alone, with only my dogs, quite content to finally have an excuse for total isolation. I almost wish it could last a bit longer…

Tomorrow Never Comes

It’s weird how life takes you on these loops. You start out thinking you know what you want to do, or need to do, or expecting a certain outcome, or being certain you will never have an outcome you’d like, and then you forget about all of that while you Just Survive and suddenly you look back and there you are, where you never thought you’d be, or exactly where you didn’t dare to hope you’d end up, but somehow it all ties back to a moment in your past when you decided. You decided something. You took one step and it landed you a million miles away on an entirely different planet.

When I was barely 20, still married and living in the cult with More Small Children that was good for my mental health, someone gave me two books: The Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet. This person knew I was enamored of all things Winnie-the-Pooh and was eagerly awaiting the book I planned to write about Poohology (which is yet forthcoming), and bought me the books as a nod of support in my effort. Being the slightly-repressed and definitely undereducated person I was at the time, I gave them a little peruse, set them aside, and then at some point I got rid of them because all of that Eastern Mysticism probably was satanic or something.

Fast-forward 20 years and I find myself held in thrall with the ideology of Taoism and digging into literature on the subject… and I had to go and buy these two books all over again. Really as it happens I’ve been writing about Taoism (or Daoism) for some time now but lacked the “conceptual framework” to describe it. The ideas of Wu Wei (force nothing) and flowing with life as it comes align well with the stoic philosophies I have been practicing (never perfecting) for some time, but with a more compassionate acceptance of human emotion and a reliance upon the Inner Voice of conscience, or Gut Feelings, or that Still, Small Voice, or Jimeny Cricket or whathaveyou.

I’ve live most of my life focused on the outcome, and only in recent years began to wonder if I’ve got it all backwards. It’s easy to talk about “The Journey” being the point of it all but when it comes down to daily choices, in the back of my mind there’s always this X+Y=Z, action = consequence equation telling me that if I pick the right option I can control the outcome. Nothing could be further from the truth and “The Journey” is supposed to be so much more that manipulating my own choices against my own will to attempt to control the outcome. What if it’s not about the outcome? What if the choice I make today was about today and not the future? What a terrifying, liberating thought.

The crazy thing is, the more I make today choices, the more my outcomes seem to fall into place. Outcomes that I’ve even forgotten about because I was busy choosing for today. It’s hard to re-groove a brain to forget about tomorrow. But I have had allowed too many tomorrows and too many yesterdays ruin too many todays and none of them have been worth it.

The stoics focused on the idea that today is the only thing we know for sure. “Memento Mori” - Remember You Will Die - was their mantra. I struggled with the morbidity of that for a long time but the last two years have firmly cemented in my brain the knowledge that none of us are guaranteed a tomorrow. Today is the only life we have. And I am learning that all the today choices I make will land me in surprising places. Life is just like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books. You don’t really have any idea which adventure you’re choosing when you turn the page. You just turn it and go. You flow with life. You force nothing. You take the steps in front of you and make the choices you are presented with each day for the accomplishment of that day. The ultimate outcome is today, because in truth, tomorrow never comes.

Old Me/New Me

I used to be able to turn anything into an adventure.

As I sit on my hotel bed near SEATAC at one AM, I find the idea of two different flights canceled as I try to navigate my way home from helping instruct a course in Minnesota during a blizzard, less of an adventure and more… frustrating.

There was a time I’d be giddy to have a hotel bed. There was a time that hours of layover provided a welcome break from the responsibilities of my life and an excellent people watching opportunity. Today, as I watched the masked hordes stagger by like a tribe of Nike-clad zombies, I felt sadness, moments of disgust, and a spiraling sense of hopelessness that I would ever get back to my own bed and more importantly, dogs.

When did this become not fun? When did I become not fun? When did people stop amusing me innocently and start offending me for there very being alive and daring to sneeze in the same terminal where I wait endlessly? When did I become and introverted homebody?

Maybe it’s just these last two years. Maybe everybody is me. Maybe we all hate the masks but are secretly relieved that they hide our glowering scowls and the chin hairs we couldn’t pluck since our tweezers are lost in luggage space someplace between Seattle and Spokane and under the questionable stewardship of either Delta or Alaska Airlines and their mission to make all American’s lives even more frustrating than a pandemic does. Or is that just me?

When did I forget to be grateful for free hotel toothbrushes and warm cookies at check in? When did I stop noticing the really nice waitress at one airport bar and the really tired and overwhelmed waitress at the other airport bar? When did airport bars lose their shiny, warm-fuzzy effect on me?

This is what old people are. I am old people. I ran out of ibuprofen during our perpetually extended layover. i guess old people are more prepared for me and don’t put tweezers in their checked luggage. Many of them don’t even sit in airport bars.

Be Like Taylor

All Too Well.

Taylor Swift is shunned for her “juvenile” recounting of every failed love affair. She’s scorned for her emotive retelling of every heartbreak and memory. But what if it’s the rest of us that are wrong in our false maturity?

What if fighting these truths, these instincts and feelings is the real immaturity? What if the wisdom of age actually looks like telling our stories bravely without the need to hide in the shadows? Why are we taught to dishonor the pain and joy we experience? Why are we compelled to hide away the damages that shape the statues that we become after the chisel impact?

Is vulnerability uncovering these emotions and putting them on display for the whole world or are we more at risk when we don the fragile mask that we all wear to cover our realities and hide the flaws that have created us?

Why are we so ashamed of the pain we feel? These lows and highs are the very things that set us apart from other animals that roam the earth. Emotion is the “divine spark” that makes us human, and we’re taught to resist this part of ourselves. We’re told we should not feel, but if we must, that it should stay hidden.

It’s another form of striving… It’s another unnecessary fight. What if we could be like Taylor, acknowledging our pain from the rooftops and letting those feelings make us billionaires? Her honesty resonates. Let’s stop judging her for it.

Letting Go of Outcomes

I’ve always been hung up on the outcome.

I’ve always needed to know that my actions have consequences, that if I take the right steps, I would get the result I was aiming for. Life has taught me that none of this is true. That even my long-held belief in cause and effect, sowing and reaping - even that doesn’t always pan out.

Looking ahead to the new year, and the barrage of resolutions and inspirational outlooks coming at me from all sides, I’ve been wondering what it would be like if I didn’t have any goals or plans or achievement requirements imposed upon myself.

I’ve been diving into some Taoist ideas, specifically the concept of Wu-Wei, something a friend told me about, the idea of “force nothing.” The whole premise threw me off at first. It feels like the opposite of the boot-strap, get-after-it mentality that I have operated under for so long. It seems to violate the “god helps those who help themselves” principle. The thought of doing LESS to find direction is foreign, to say the least.

But when I look back over my life, the greatest successes I’ve had were not from trying hard and making things happen, they were doors that opened because of steps I took that were in front of me. Obvious choices with very unexpected “outcomes.” People I have met along the way, connections I never looked for that have led me to exactly the space and time that I know I am supposed to be.

All of the striving moments - struggling my way through a college education that hasn’t resulted in much more than a lot of debt and anxiety, working jobs that violate my sense of purpose and self because they make more “financial” sense than the alternative… these forced situations have rarely resulted in outcomes that I intended, often the opposite. Not to say that everything doesn’t happen for some reason, and I have found value in these experiences, I wouldn’t be who or where I am without them, but did they have the pivotal importance that I assigned to them?

I’m beginning to think that everything you need to know about Taoism is already modeled for us by dogs. Let’s take Johnny. Johnny is a rescue mutt of uncertain origin. Johnny gives zero fucks about pleasing anyone, and yet he regularly does so in his own innocent self-interest. Johnny lives every moment without thought for the next. When he is hungry he eats (which is always, if we allow it), if he is tired, he sleeps. He is unconcerned if we want something from him, if we pick him up and carry him to the couch for compulsory snuggling, he doesn’t fight it. If he gets hot and wants to leave, he leaves. If he is motivated to get apples from the neighbor’s yard next door, he digs a hole under the fence. He does no more than he needs to do to accomplish his mission. He has nothing to prove. No future goals, only immediate needs. Johnny does not force things. He lives Wu Wei. Wu Wei doesn’t mean DO nothing, it just means don’t strive to make it happen. Take life as it comes and accept the moment for what it is. Just like Johnny. Johnny has come to terms with the fact that there is much in his life he has no control over and he lives happily with the choices he does have.

The idea of Wu Wei takes different forms. It can be interpreted to mean not denying yourself anything. Conversely, it can also mean that you allow your self nothing. It can mean doing everything put before you without contest or it can mean that you take nothing on that is not critical for survival. What I am learning is that Wu Wei is all of these things in seasons and phases of life. As we grow up through life, we learn through allowances and doing things, that some of it does not bring us life. We identify the things that we do and allow that rob us of health and joy. And then as we grow older, we learn to eliminate those things. We allow less, we do fewer things. Wu Wei doesn’t have boundaries. It doesn’t have walls that force us back into form. It flows, like water, around life’s twists and turns. It rolls, like Johnny, from moment to moment, seeking only to exist in the present moment.

All of this makes me question my whole approach to life. The goals and plans that I have always felt like I needed to have to work toward, to strive for. Imagining a life without them brings a bizarre weightlessness to my thoughts. What if none of it really matters? It’s like the stoic idea of memento mori - “remember at any moment you could die.” This may be your last breath. It isn’t morbid, it removes the weight of tomorrow and allows today to be the climax, the end, the goal of your life, and it leaves tomorrow as the mystery that it really is no matter how much we think we control.

I am learning to like this idea of letting go of outcomes. To do the things I do each day as they present themselves for the sole purpose of winning this day. Not looking for the ways I can control tomorrow with my actions today. It’s a relief.

The Beginning of the End

Today in my FaceBook memories, there’s a picture of my oldest kid. It’s when she came to visit me for Thanksgiving after I had moved back to Northport from Bend and she stayed down in Oregon to finish her last year of high school. It was the first holiday season that one of my kids wasn’t there for the Whole Thing. It was the first sign of things to come.

It’s a natural progression. Everyone together for all of those years, and at some point, it begins to unravel. The traditions that you couldn’t imagine living without as a young child start to become logistically difficult, because of work, school, obligations to in-laws, long distance travel… all of the reasons. The logistical difficulties seem to swell to a climax as your own children begin to come of age and the tug of their retail jobs, sports events, and bad attitudes contribute to the the question - “why are we still trying to do this?.”

The first Christmas that I spent apart from my kids years ago was terrible. They were with their dad, and instead of staying nearby so I could selfishly cut into his holiday time like I usually did, I traveled several hours away to be with my parents. I cried that morning. I hugged my dog. It wasn’t Christmas, it was just a weird day with lots of people opening presents and a very uncomfortable sense of Alone. But I survived.

The years went on and the logistics increased in complexity and there was more off and on, piecing it together, “making it happen.”

And then you skip a year. You miss a thanksgiving with everybody. Instead of olives on your fingers and folding chairs squeezed into corners of the table for every cousin, you’re on a patio overlooking the Sea of Cortez, eating an “American Thanksgiving” buffet with a room full of strangers and a bottle of Mexican red wine.

And you don’t die. In fact, it’s ok. It’s weird. It’s different. But it’s a chance to remember all those amazing years and be grateful for them, even while you acknowledge that you could get used to this.

A couple of years ago, the idea of being alone on a holiday seemed like a fate worse than death. Now, as I’ve lived through some small holidays, some foreign holidays, some weird mixes of family and friends… being alone every now and then doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, there’s something liberating when you can fully release all expectation to perform EVERY traditional exercise to make a holiday perfect. There’s freedom in knowing that I can skip out on Stecker Apple Salad for one year and nobody will die. There is an overwhelming sense of peace on the other side of the driving guilt to create the ideal holiday experience for everyone around me. I’ll always love our big, traditional family holidays, but I am also starting to love doing my own thing every now and then.

If I had seen the trajectory of holidays played out after that Thanksgiving that Halle came home from Bend, I never would have guessed it would look like this. But I don’t mind. There are many, many things about my life that have surprised me since then. Letting go of long-held family traditions is one of the most unexpected turns for me. Traditions are the things that root us back into our values and remind us of who we are and what is important to us - what we have to be thankful for. But traditions evolve, just like people do, and there’s beauty in that.

Fate Knows Better

Amor Fati.

It didn’t happen to you, it happened for you.

Marcus Aurelius understood that every obstacle created a new pathway, every closed door provides redirection to an open window, and every failure is a step toward success, IF we respond to it as such.

This morning, as I left for my too-long commute, the lid exploded off of my Hydroflask and dumped hot coffee all over the floorboard of my car. It was black coffee. That was a mercy. It went down into the passenger floorboard and not all over my white shirt, lap, the center console, or the two dogs riding shotgun. Another mercy. And I got a Dutch Bros peppermint breve out of the deal. Part of me thinks the dogs planned it so they could get a puppuccino, but nobody is taking responsibility.

On the way home I resisted all take-out temptation and pushed through with plans to use up the leftover soup in my refrigerator, along with a grilled cheese sandwich. The cheese was moldy. I cut it off and used the good insides anyway. I snapped one of my favorite spatulas in half in a poorly-thought-out attempt to use it as a panini press. One less utensil to cram in my jar.

Life doesn’t happen to you. It happens for you. All of the mishaps and messups push you toward the pathway you’re supposed to be on, which, as I have learned, changes often and suddenly.

This is the time of year that I traditionally entertain a certain level of seasonal depression. Or at least I call it that because it hits me with every year at this time, along with the realization that I live in a part of the universe that won’t get warm again for several months and to which the sun seems to be allergic. I cannot find happy. I know I am supposed to. ALL of the things are right in the world. My kids are good (mostly), my dogs are good (but naughty). I am gainfully employed, new house, reliable car, and I am relatively healthy for an overweight, mid-forties wannabe who refuses to work out. I have no REASON to be sad. But sadness doesn’t need a reason, sometimes it only needs space. It needs acknowledgement and then a gentle crowding out by choices to put one foot in front of the other and show up for The Things that are expected. Or maybe in some cases, choosing not to meet those expectations, but setting new ones that take you down a different path. As long as you’re taking steps.

Loving fate doesn’t mean that dumping your coffee doesn’t suck or that sadness will never need space. Loving fate means that you know the sadness gives more meaning to the eventual happiness that WILL return at some point. Loving fate means seeing that Dutch Bros opportunity in the coffee catastrophe. It means recognizing the mercies.

Fate is a funny thing. It’s the best reminder that there are very few things in this life that we control. It’s also a good reminder that that lack of control is probably for the best. Sometimes fate knows better than we do. Humans make stupid choices. Like eating chocolate when you KNOW it’s gonna cause a major breakout, or slurping boiling gravy off the spoon to taste when there’s no doubt it’s gonna burn the shit out of your mouth, or staying invested in something for too long because of sunk costs. Fate knows better.

Fate sent me the wrong backpack. I ordered a green one, but the company accidentally sent me a black one. They sent the green one to replace it, so today I had both packs to compare. And I couldn’t decide which one I liked better and I had a full existential meltdown because I felt like I had no one to ask for advice. But then I realized that some decisions, like backpack aesthetics, are best determined independently, and that it’s ok if I feel like no one cares which backpack I choose. I struggle hard with the fate of aloneness some times. It’s a fate I have a difficult time loving. But it’s a good exercise for me to trust the pathway that fate has thrust me toward. It’s good practice in relinquishing my delusions of control in the big things and enjoying the small powers I have, like choosing the backpack that fate sent me instead of the one I thought I wanted. Maybe that’s an analogy for something.

I don’t know who this guy is but he clearly doesn’t appreciate the small mercy of a drawer knob slow-down.

'Round and Round

In the earliest part of the second century AD, the Roman Emperor Trajan waged war on a barbarian nation to the west in the land that is now Romania. The treasure that he brought back to Roman coffers was legendary, and a tower over 120 feet tall was erected in his honor, topped with a bronze statue that would be replaced 1400 years later by a rendition of St. Peter in an attempt by the Vatican to sanctify the ancient landmark.

The cast-aside statue of Trajan depicted the warrior-emperor holding a staff in one hand and a globe in the other. The Romans knew, 100 years after the advent of Christ, that the world was round. By the time St. Peter’s statue was hoisted to replace Trajan on the column, the world, ensconced in the shroud of the dark ages, would have forgotten this knowledge and would be operating on the superstitious assumption that the world was flat. Give humans a thousand years and we’ll forget everything we ever knew.

If you labor under the delusion that we can’t regress, that we can’t go backwards into a darkness that we have emerged out of, you have not studied history. To believe that we are somehow in an automated, perpetual forward motion as a species is a fallacy, and one that I am guilty of. The movement of time does not guarantee the progress of humanity. Small deviances from truth can lead to catastrophic trajectories, off course from the promise that we have glimpsed. But this is the cyclic nature of history.

In his post-apocalyptic novel Those Who Remain, G. Michael Hopf postulates that “Hard Times Create Strong Men, Strong Men Create Good Times, Good Times Create Weak Men, Weak Men Create Hard Times.” The level of comfort we find in the present status of civilization has caused us to forget how recently this status was challenged, and makes us reluctant to give credence to any imminent threat. But Rome fell from great heights. And in the living memory of our own culture, we have known very real threats to the fabric of civilization in the form of genocide, slavery, and the denial of our own history.

The theme of new beginnings from tragic and unplanned endings keeps re-emerging in my own life lately, on several fronts. I am keenly aware of the instability of comfort and the transient nature of peace and tranquility. The only thing that saves me from catastrophe are the lessons my past has taught me. To remember the truth and knowledge I have gained from experience. The same is true for the human species.

At the height of the Roman Empire, life expectancy for human beings was 72 years. A thousand years later during the dark ages, it was in the low 30s. We forgot the lessons we learned. We allowed superstitious religion and leaders who feared enlightenment, education and independent thought above all else to rule the world. The cycle of power repeats itself. Our fear of the things we cannot control gives way to blind faith and we lose contact with the knowledge we have gained. If we forget that the world is round because we have erased the reminders, we can eventually be led to believe that it is flat. Trajan was replaced by St. Peter atop the column in Rome, but what was the tradeoff? What are we trading now as we exchange our memories for sanctification?

Quintum Novembris

George Cruikshank's illustration of Guy Fawkes, published in William Harrison Ainsworth's 1840 novel Guy Fawkes.

In 1626, at the ripe old age of 17, John Milton penned one of his earliest poems, Quintus Novembris , an immortalization of the infamous Gunpowder Plot led by Robert Catesby in 1605. Catesby and co-conspirators, including a man named Guy Fawkes (the legendary character that would lead to the inspiration for the pop-culture icon Anonymous) planned to fill the basement (or “undercroft”, coloquially) of the House of Commons with gunpowder and blow it up on the State Opening Day of Parliment, when King James and all of his protestant leadership would be in attendance. Catesby’s plot was uncovered and Guy Fawkes was caught guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder on November 4th, the eve of opening day. The plot, and subsequent literature springing forth, including the haunting “Remember, remember, the 5th of November…” refrain, would weave through history as a cautionary tale for would-be revolutionaries, while at the same time carrying with it the burden of conscience that requires all people to consider the righteousness of their system of power.

(NOTE: If you are unfamiliar with the era of history, you can find a dramatic rendering of the plot on HBO called Gunpowder, which stars an actual descendant of Catesby, Kit Harrington [ok, so you know something, Jon Snow].)

Milton’s examination of the events of 1605 are said to have influenced his later work, including Paradise Lost, and while Catesby’s ‘treasonous’ revolution might have failed to dethrone the protestant King James, it paints a grim picture of the religious persecution that church-led states are capable of. The heavy-handed church-state intolerance of any other religious practice in the 17th century that triggered the Gunpowder Plot is the same that led the Pilgrims to travel to American in 1620, casting off the Church of England’s mandated worship protocols and forming “separatist” churches based on democratic principles and voluntary association. The Puritans would follow the Pilgrims out of England a few years later, after holding out hope that the church could be reformed and did not need to be abandoned completely.

History has proven that the church as a state fixture cannot resist corruption. The very first amendment of our own Constitution is clear on the danger held in this practice.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

Even Shakespeare casts aspersion on the vain attempt to co-opt religion for political purposes. The Gunpowder Plot plays an eerie parallel to the storyline in MacBeth and the danger of seeking power for its own sake and using religion as a ploy in that quest.

Faith, here's an equivocator,
that could swear in both the scales against either scale;
who committed treason enough for God's sake,
yet could not equivocate to heaven - MacBeth Act 2 Scene 3

Church-state overreach and religious persecution has fallen out of vogue in most developed nations, as intellectual evolution and globalized literacy have enabled humans to seek spiritual and philosophical truth on our own terms. But does this access to “knowledge” and the easily available information make us all involuntary members of a “church” that we aren’t even aware of? Are we all worshipping at the prescribed altars of science and politics with the knowledge that our gunpowder plots would be no more that a self-destructive drop in the bucket of socially-driven expectation and behavior? Are we still allowed to believe and worship as we choose or do we know too well that we, like Guy Fawkes, will burn for challenging the prevailing regime?

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli'ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holla boys, Holla boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
And what should we do with him? Burn him!

Ideology

For some reason today has been the day appointed by the cosmos for me to come to terms with the “ologies” I have chosen to subscribe to. The subject was broached with a challenge in Facebook, and as I mulled it over, and went to church, and stared at the words on the wall to the worship song, I needed to know for myself, where I stand.

For starters, let’s get one thing clear: I believe in “god.” I believe that god takes many forms in many cultures. I believe that god is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. I believe that Jesus is god's son - in the same sense that I am his daughter, and have the same means of communication with god that Christ did. I believe the bible is an interesting cultural collection of anecdotes, wisdom and rules. I believe that the word of god (not to be confused with the bible) is living and present and speaks among us and through us daily. I believe god has as much to say to me through my kids or my heathen friends, as he does through a leather bound, gold edged book.

I believe our purpose fin life is to use every breath to the best effect for every person. I believe that our destiny, ordained by god, is fulfilled by every choice, action and word that we make. I believe that “sin” is any transgression against natural law that results in pain or negative consequence for ones self or another person. I believe these consequences are the reminders we are given to redirect us and send us back on the path of blessing, which is fulfilling our individual destiny of making each day better for ourselves and everyone around us. This is the gospel I believe in spreading to the world.

I believe that god is love, and the best way we serve god is by being love to everyone around us.

I believe that heaven and hell are the promise of consequences here on earth, and ever after, for rest and peace.

I believe that everything happens for a reason, and we are given the tools that we need throughout our life to make the best of it and change bad for good.

All of this being said, I can be free to worship the god of Love and Master of Creation without being hindered by guilt about which rules I have broken according to Deuteronomy, Anne Byrd, or any other spiritual influences I have had.

I can respect and honor the beliefs of my family and friends in a literal messiah and an infallible scripture. I understand the desire for a script, a map to follow, a directive. I've never been one for directions. But I believe in relationship. If god says to me: don't do this, it's evil!!! I could care less. Evil sounds a little fun. But if god says to me: Don't do this, it hurts! I can receive that. Whether it’s me, or someone else hurting, it's a violation of why we are here on earth. God is the grace, the space, the love we need to make the right choices, the unselfish ones, the clean ones. God is the access we have to empathy, to hope and to vision. God is the bridge between our shallow selves and the wholeness of community.

At the risk of sounding blasphemous, I cannot reconcile myself with christ as the son of god, the only Way to Salvation, the Messiah. I believe god's story is so much bigger and more varied than that. That Jesus bled for our liberty from hell is great. But why don't we worship religiously at the foot of every soldier that has suffered and died, many just as heinously as Christ, for our liberties? Why is The trial that Christ endured more than any martyr in history for a different cause? So he was innocent. Blameless. How many innocent people have suffered. Free of sin? That depends on whom you ask. According to some cultures, Jesus was as depraved as any of us. If Christ bled and died for our sins, why are any of us subjected to painful consequences? Following that logic, my period should have ceased to torment me the minute I was saved. But then again, Christ himself said that he did not come to abolish the law - so we should still be confined during menstruation? Or we should be required to marry our brother in law if we are widowed? Or we should be stoned for being raped?? Which law remains? The laws against homosexuality? But not the laws against eating pork or being in public when you're on your period? It's a little blurry to me. And not for lack of reading. I'd love to hear other interpretations on this... Although I'm pretty sure I've heard them all.

I would call myself a Theist, in the sense of the early founding fathers, who believed that god granted us as humans, all of the tools to make our lives exactly what they should be, a blessing. Free will leaves it to us to decide whether we will subject good or bad consequences on those we come into contact with. Sure, god can fix it. He's omnipotent. There are miracles. There is grace. There are keys - some of these we find in the bible, or maybe the Qran. While we're on the subject, if you're interested, I love the Old Testament. It's fascinating. I love the gospel of Luke. It's rich in detail and thus, drama. I hate Paul. He's a chauvinist and a pompous, self righteous ass. I see these same personalities in modern day pastors/disciples. I love the logic and insight of the Catholic GK Chesterton, the Protestant CS Lewis, the Presuppositionist Francis Schaeffer, and the Objectivist Ayn Rand. God speaks through many channels.

I know this violates the traditional literalist sensibilities of many of my friends and family, for which I apologize. I honor your belief and respect your choices. For my children I hope and pray that they find the path to god that grants them the fulfillment of their destiny.

But as for me - "my god and I don't need a middle man". We have a relationship. I talk to god more candidly than I would to most people. "Sometimes I use curse words when I pray." I don't care if he made the world in 7 days or 7 billion years. It's still amazing. This life is precious. That is universal. The interpretation of this religiously is cultural. We live in a Judeo Christian culture which means church on Sunday and a leather bound bible and I'm fine with that. And I'm excited to get back to where I can worship god without being hijacked by the guilt of Christianity and cultural norms. I'm ready to re-start this journey.

Recommended reading:

Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton
The Great Divorce, CS Lewis
The God Who Is There, Francis Schaeffer
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

Filed Under: Political Opinion?

Let's get this out there:

I am a reluctant believer. As in, I believe in God against my own stubborn will. If you have questions about this, then read : Things That I Believe .

I am also against politics. As in, I hate them. I think they should go away. I think people spend so much time worrying about GREAT BIG THINGS that really don't matter that they miss out on all of the Best Little Things that are really what life is all about. If I didn't face immense guilt for not voting, I would not vote, but being related to the people that I am related to, the guilt is immense and imminent. Not that the ballot doesn't occasionally slip into the envelope missing a few marks here and there. Most of the problem is that I am uneducated. And in order to feel like I am not making The Worst And Most Uninformed Decision Ever, I would need to educate myself, which would require reading a lot of things and trying to weed through the biases and getting Really Ticked Off at people who can't just Be Logical and Do The Right Thing, but have to make laws about it. Then I just start writing my own laws about death penalties for petty people and mandatory sterilizations and it really isn't healthy. So I am against politics.

Every once in awhile though, a Facebook rampage catches my eye and I feel compelled to say Something. But once again, I am forced to educate myself, which I did a little bit this time, really by reading some heavily biased articles on both sides and trying to read between the lines to see what the issue really was, but I also went to some government websites to check things out. I was pretty proud of myself. And if you correct my incorrect referencing in this blog, I will probably block you.

In case you aren't aware of it, I was homeschooled throughout my K-12 lifespan. I guess there were like 5 days in a Christian Kindergarten, but I only remember the potato stamps and the tape decks with headphones and Sarah T wearing a zip sweatshirt with nothing underneath which violated my accelerated 5 year old fashion sense. It was purple though. Kudos on color choice, Toed. So back to being homeschooled: I was. And I don't regret it. Not for one second, as if I had any choice. But watching my 16 year old Tigger daughter go through several public high schools is enough for me to know that homeschooling was probably not a bad choice for me: someone else's 16 year old Tigger daughter (thanks mom and dad). I am not against homeschooling. But even with aforementioned 16 year old, I wouldn't consider doing it myself for my own kids for many reasons, the first of which is the ENORMITY of information that I didn't receive and have spent years chasing (also not a bad thing), as well as the total unabashed humility to admit that I Do Not Have (really any) All Of The Answers So Don't Ask Me, and the athletic and vocational opportunities I didn't get.

If done well, homeschooling can be a powerful thing. I have RARELY, very very rarely, seen it done well. My mom, bless her heart, was the Champion of Effective Homeschooling, and my siblings and I have her to thank for our above average communication and questionable, if subjective, reasoning skills. However, I'd venture to say that she will admit that somewhere in the middle of educating her 6 kids and the drama that life with all of them brings, some of her hardcore educational steam wore off. I personally hold Bill Gothard and his ATIA booklets from Hades responsible for her loss of motivation, along with the implosion of our family and the loss of a brother and some other cult-like dealings we faced. But if homeschooling was ever done right, my mom was on that track.

All of that being said, I see this story pop up on Facebook about this persecuted homeschooled family, the Romeike's. Of course all of my remaining Christian Home Schooling friends (some of which ARE doing it right, I believe) are posting it because, oh the horror, of seeing religious liberties, the thing this nation was founded on, revoked or withheld. My other friends, (you know who you are) of the left wing bent, anti homeschool and anti god in some cases, are posting the story because, oh the horror, of the hypocrisy of supporting immigrants with threatened religious beliefs in the face of denying immigrants who seek survival outside of their impoverished homeland. And of course, according to some, it's all Obama and his nasty administration's fault. And according to others, homeschooling is a privilege not a right and we can't support the brainwashing of children by crazy parents any more than the German government can. Strong feelings on both sides. I read the articles. On both sides. I did some hunting. Because for me, homeschooling is my heritage, and I am curious about it's ramifications; I have also been to Germany and was profoundly impacted by the governmental regulations on religious practice, where the pastors are all state employees. And so I wonder, what is the right thing? Morally, ethically, legally, in this situation. The cynic in me supports deporting over-productive families who are against Harry Potter. The libertarian in me stands staunchly in their defense. The rationalist that I would like to imagine being says that the ISSUE is very much NOT the issue. So back off, Michael Farris.

So where did the Romeike's go wrong, and ethically, what is the right answer? Which might not coincide with the correct legal answer...

The Romeike's have found a friend and a defender in Mike Donnely, a lawyer for The Homeschool Legal Defense Association. While Mr. Donnely makes many valid points about religious freedom and the right in the US to homeschool, he is overshooting the legal issue of how the Romeike's got here: seeking political asylum. The constitution grants political asylum or refugee status to "to people who have been persecuted or fear they will be persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion. " http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum . Refugee status is legally granted to "people outside of their country who are unable or unwilling to return home because they fear serious harm." While the Romeike's were denied the right to homeschool in Germany, it can be questioned whether they truly qualify as refugees. If the Romeike's had immigrated to the US for work opportunities and acquired their citizenship according to the same path that workers from Mexico or other countries would, this issue would never have presented itself to the federal court system. But the Romeike's seem intent on making this an issue of religious liberty and "persecution" they may have faced in Germany, which I am sure makes the German government feel very supportive of them, as well as Obama or any president or administration. The Romeike's would have you believe that 'serious harm' would include the mandatory public education or state approved private education of their children or having their children removed from their home. The main objection to enrolling their children in state approved public or private school is their lack of opportunity to teach their children Christian principles. Unless Germany is doing something totally weird, most school days are less than seven hours, leaving a large remaining chunk of time for parental influence. The "serious harm" might refer to the very large fines that the Romeike's were faced with paying, but most likely the thing they fear the most is having their children's thoughts directed by someone other than themselves. Which for many, is the most terrible thing. Homeschooling, in my best and most well informed and experienced opinion, is by ALL MEANS a privilege, and should probably be a right. If it is not, are parents precluded from educating their children in any religious vein that they choose during non-school hours?

For me, the legal thing is not the ethical thing, and vise verse. Sure, they should be allowed to stay and work their way toward citizenship, assuming they are "a person of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States during all relevant periods under the law". http://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/citizenship-through-naturalization/path-us-citizenship But to attempt to do it through the pathway of political asylum is where, in my mind, they went wrong. If I was a judge, I would have to rule that they do not qualify under that status. Much the same as the jury who will side with the plaintiff for a giant settlement against an insurance company that was in no wise responsible, just because "they have more money than they know what to do with" (I sat on this jury, ladies and gentlemen), the court cannot grant asylum just because it would be "really great" if the Romeike's can stay. They need to find a legal pathway that has nothing to do with homeschooling or persecution, unless someone is missing some fingers.... But that is just my two sense, and what do I know?

I guess my point in saying all of this is that I shouldn't ever host political opinions, because I realize I open myself up for an onslaught of debate, and I really can't stand seeing it on my page even if I initiate it. I also openly admit that I am SURE that I am missing some facts and don't know the whole story. Do we ever? But since my Facebook page was slathered with this stuff anyway, and since anytime I see the words HOMESCHOOL, MICHAEL FARRIS, or PERSECUTION on my page I get a little bristly, I just wanted to throw out there some considerations that might not be the BLACK/WHITE that the media is feeding us. In closing, I hope that the Romeike's can stay. Not as political refugees but as good people concerned with the raising of their children in the best way that they know how. I do not hold Barack Obama or anybody in the judicial system responsible for the loss of their appeal. And once again, I hate politics, and we are missing the big picture.

Promote The General Welfare

I wrote this in 2016, and for me, it's even more true today. I consider myself a Libertarian of sorts, and the recent debates about mandated vaccines and outlawed abortions have me frustrated with the hypocritical control on BOTH sides. I am very much pro-vaccine and VERY much anti-mandate. I am very much anti-abortion and VERY much pro-choice. These are decisions that need to be made by individuals in counsel with their doctors and families, taking into consideration, as we always should, the effect of our choices on the larger community.

My parents taught me two very important lessons growing up: 1) life isn't fair and 2) just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you should. The first one became very clear to me with little effort expended on their part, because when you have 5 siblings in a semi-isolated homeschool environment, basically nothing is fair, especially life.

The second one was learned more gradually through a trial-and-error method that had my parents alternately scratching their heads and cursing the day that I was born - or sometimes both. Whether it was running away across the city of Portland at 7 years old to use the swing set at church, or jumping off the top bunk naked to land on a cold metal lunch box with my cousins and siblings, I was forever trying things that I COULD do, but definitely/probably shouldn't have. My parents used to say that if there was a line drawn in the sand, my oldest brother would wisely stay on the lawful side of the line a very safe distance from any possible infringement, while I would brazenly stick as many appendages across to see what would happen. My younger sister is the one who figured out the line the most to her benefit by denying its existence and/or her knowledge of it in the first place. Typical third born.

Mom and dad were smart enough to know that at some point, external government wasn't enough. I think it was probably the 110th spanking when I wouldn't stay in my bed one night as a toddler and ended up falling asleep in my bedroom closet in total defiance that really drove that home for them. So, to their credit, they pushed us from a young age to put on self-government. To make choices not based on what we could get away with, but what would bring the benefit we sought, whether that was "bringing glory to the lord", making and keeping friends, or not getting caught watching soap operas in the middle of the day when mom went out to coffee with her friends. Self government is something that I have tried to teach my own kids, with wildly varying results, but who are ultimately turning out to be reasonably well adjusted adultish type people. OK, so nobody is in jail. It's a lot of win right there. Self government, y'all.

In light of recent socio-political events, the principle of self-government again and again seems to be the stress fracture where our world is breaking apart. School shootings, gang shootings, police shootings, protests, demonstrations, deleting emails and deporting immigrants... we live in a culture of doing things because we CAN. We CAN riot in our own neighborhoods in protest because freedom of expression, right? We CAN say things without repercussion. We CAN get away with murder, sometimes literally, because nobody taught us that the actions we choose are bigger than the consequences that we might avoid.

There are more things out there on both sides of the fence that I disagree with than things that I really support, when it comes right down to it. I think people are crazy - all of them. Bat. Guano. Crazy. The things that we will do to each other and ourselves, the liberties that we take (because we CAN), the actions that we justify, have gotten out of control. But the beautiful thing about where we live is exactly that: WE CAN.

We have this thing called the Bill of Rights that defines the liberty that this nation was founded on, and it promises us that we CAN do things. We CAN choose our own religion, or none at all. We CAN express how we feel. We CAN defend ourselves, need be. We CAN have privacy in our own homes... and on it goes. And no matter how much it angers me to see celebrities disrespect our national anthem - that flag and that song are the exact reason that those athletes CAN do that.

People have fought and died so that Colin Kaepernick can have the right to express whatever opinion he wants to. People have fought and died so that ALL RELIGIONS can worship freely in this country. People have fought and died so that I can legally own as many cool guns as I want to. People have fought and died so that we don't have to live with an oppressive external government telling us who we can marry, which bathroom we can use, what we can eat, how we must live. I don't have to agree with Colin Kaepernick, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Black Lives Matter, the Proud Boys or any other American, but we all get the same privilege of making our voices heard.

All of this CAN is powerful. And with great power comes great responsibility. Just as I don't take lightly the privilege AND responsibility of owning guns legally, neither should any freedom of expression be abused to harm and destroy communities, or exact some twisted form of vigilante justice through rioting, federal building takeovers or the murder of Peace Officers. Because we live in the Greatest Nation we have the ability and the charge of making the right choices in our actions to bring the benefit we seek: stronger communities, healthier families, safer schools and neighborhoods and a better world all the way around.

There are so many great things that we CAN do here, and so many terrible things as well. The culture of this country is entirely reliant upon the self government of its people. The choices we make as individuals define who we are as a nation, whether we are breaking out the windows of a 7-11 or candy striping at the VA Hospital, it's up to us. Whether we take a knee during the National Anthem or stand in the rain to memorialize a fallen hero, it's up to us. So while I won't defend Kaepernick, I will stand up for his right to express himself, and I will offer a nod of thanks to every Veteran and active duty Service Member throughout history that has guaranteed that right for him and for me.

What CAN you do? Or more importantly, what WILL you do with the liberties that you have? In the immortal words of one of my all-time favorite bands, "Free is not your right to chose, it's answering what's asked of you: to give the love you have until it's gone."

I'd encourage you, if it's been a while, to read the constitution in it's entirety and quit either ignoring it completely or using it as a misinterpreted soapbox for your political vitriol.

#PROMOTETHEGENERALWELFARE

On Broken Hearts

Let's be honest: none of us get out this unscathed. We've all had our hearts broken. From the first time that our mothers swatted our hands away from a hot stove and we didn't understand how the nurturer became the bearer of violence against us, we've experienced the pain of betrayal.

We've had our hearts broken as small children when our friends don't let us join them at the potato stamp table in kindergarten (this is me sharing my most vulnerable moments with you), and again as middle schoolers when our BFFs tell the cute boy about that one time we picked our noses and ruins us FOREVER.

Your heart is broken again and again in high school when your One True Love turns out not to be and dumps you for the girl who snuck out of the house in the ultraminiskirt. Every disappointment grows in importance as you draw ever nearer to your "Destiny..."

And then your heart break again when the Forever that was supposed to be Destiny end in abysmal disaster. Or even if you find some version of Happily Ever After, there are always the ups and downs and mini heart breaks, and the major ones. The days when some hurts feel like they are unbearable.

The more people you love, the greater your odds are, statistically speaking, to face more heartache in your life. Even the happiest of families have their dark moments. We unintentionally inflict pain on the ones we love the most because it's in those spaces that we are the most real, and the most careless. There is no love without hurt. It's the hurting that caused by love that gives us art and music and poetry and philosophy.

Unless you are a sociopath, the question isn't IF you'll get a broken heart, the question is when, and your investment into the lives around you will be rewarded in equal amounts of heartache when those lives inevitably face hardship.

I've wrestled a lot lately with the whole question of whether parenthood is anything more than perpetual heartache. Since my kids were babies, it feels like it's been a non-stop freight train speeding, out of control, into things that can (and often do) go wrong. It picks up speed and momentum the older they get. The momentary glimpses of triumph and joy get overshadowed by the Hard Things. By rejections and breakups and failures and dashed hopes. Happiness and success come at the high cost of hard work and stress and heartache.

I watch other parents and I wonder, when they proclaim the joy of parenting, what it is I am doing wrong as I lie awake, night after night and worry whether one kid's firefighting career will be ended by a knee injury and whether there is any earthly way to pay for another kid's college tuition, and just exactly how many sporting events have to be attended and how many phone bills have to be paid to ensure that I am doing my parently duty. As they become adults and make adults decisions, there is little comfort in the knowledge that I am not legally responsible for the grown-up choices they make, because it doesn't exempt me from feeling the pain of the consequences they bear. Raising kids is just an ongoing evolution of breaking hearts.

But it's worth it. Just like falling in love, knowing the life expectancy of any relationship these days is statistically short, you still jump in. And you step up to bat again and again because those momentary highs are worth it, and even more, the people that you love, that you believe in, are worth it, even when they hurt you. Sure, there are limits. There's a time to pull the plug and walk away. There's even a time to disconnect the phone line and draw boundaries, but in this era of disposable everything, there are still people worth taking the hits for. There are bigger stories than the trauma of a moment.

What parenting, and love, and being related to other human beings has taught me, is that heartbreak is survivable. It can be endured again and again and again. The real tell of a human being is whether they will get back up and love again after each break. The character of a person lives in their willingness to walk headfirst into the next round of heartbreaks for the people that they love.

Even in the last few months I have felt the weight of heartache that I didn't think I could bear, and while I struggled to walk the steps of each day in the darkest moments, I knew it would not be my last time in that valley. I knew that I would run back into the fray, I would open up my barely-healed heart and I would do it again, because there is no life without love.

I know each time that I feel like I can't carry another burden for one of my loved ones, somehow there's a second wind and we pick up the pieces and move on. History has taught me that I am resilient, and hopefully that resilience is something that the people I love can learn with me, as we break each others hearts again and again with the mistakes we make.

The only thing I can promise them is that they're always welcome at my potato stamp table.

On Choices

(2014) This has been a summer of choosing things. And not always in a good way, like shopping for the BEST pair of shoes. More like the hard stuff, like feed the kids, or get another tattoo. That kind of thing.

All summer has been full of it. Choosing whether to suck-it-up and fight a little longer for one last breath of a dying marriage, or "cut the rope that kept you hanging from such pitiful amounts of hope"? Choosing whether to have the things I want, or be the person I am supposed to be. Choosing between having someone to be buried next to, or being able to breathe through the days and nights and maybe, hopefully, someday, cry a little less. A lot of the choices were hard things. With potential for greatness or despondence on either side. But not all of them.

There were good choices too, that were a win either way. Like Beer, or Wine? Or maybe Crazy Awesome Bachelorette party at the beach or my Next Avett Concert? And no brainer choices, like forgive and love vs. carrying grudges and isolation. And the choices of Which Song to sing (or maybe NOT to sing) at karaoke, and whether to karaoke with new friends, or old friends, or cousins, or the ultimate option: ALL OF THEM!

I had to choose about my future. Based not on my past. Not on my fear. But on hope. On the future I know that I CAN have, with my kids. Kids that are getting old, by the way. I have had to choose to fight against them as they struggle alongside me to survive, or fight with them against the common enemy of fear and shame and guilt. I have had to choose to let go, instead of hanging on tighter. To let Somebody Bigger Than me fix all of the things that I was Pretty Sure I had handled, but didn't. And I am still choosing. Every morning, to wake up, and not suffocate in the Terror Of Choosing wrong, but to make the best choice I can see. Sometimes it's the one that doesn't make sense. Sometimes it's the only thing that makes sense. Sometimes it comes from outside of me, and sometimes the choice comes screaming from my core without question or indecision.

Like whether to slap my nephew's hand when he's picking his nose mid-wedding, or take the Best Picture Ever for future embarrassment. Or staying up til 2 AM three nights in a row, or just resign myself to Oldness. (Never. Or my name is Captain Hook.) Go play soccer with the high school team or milk the sore back excuse (I have never so gladly regretted back pain!)? Deal with the growing mountain of trash or try to fix the washer? Mop the god-forsaken floors or mow the ever-loving lawn? Mend the fence or find the floor of my bedroom? Cook dinner, or delegate? Finish the bottle of wine, or... um, nahhh. No choice there.

I was talking to Somebody Sometime this summer, and we were discussing how you should respond to Real Crap when it happens to you in life. Like when your dream for a Happily Ever After is smashed into bits by a Big Jerk Who Lied, and you're only 19 years old. What do you do to fix that? How do you make the right steps to avoid the wrong steps later and how do you choose the right pathway out of that hell? I remember that point of choosing in my life. And for awhile, I tried choosing Out. I tried to give up. To die. I wanted to. But I was terribly unsuccessful, like with lots of things in my life. So then I changed my mind. I re-chose. And I decided to Kick Life in The Ass. Because I can. Because the alternative is just, well, depressing. And maybe it's been a long road of small and large choices along the way to all of that kicking, but I am still doing it. And I am still determined that I will come out on top of all of this choosing. I will win. And so will my kids.

I mean, how can these monsters NOT win?

Maybe for the moment I have chosen loneliness. And maybe I have finally come to the point where I can choose the thankless craft of parenting over My Next Avett Concert, or that tattoo that I have been craving since June. And maybe tomorrow I will wake up and realize I have been choosing all wrong, and start over again. But at least I CAN. Everybody CAN. That's the beauty of life, and of choosing. And what makes us the teeniest bit better than the fruit fly that cannot avoid drowning in my wine, compelled by instinct. (not that I don't relate to that specific instinct....)

All around me the echoes of my choices rain down on me. The memories and songs and sounds and tastes of the past, recent and distant. And it is a bittersweet thing. And I am thankful for every step of it. Every turn and twist and choice. I am thankful for how they have shaped my soundtrack, and my taste buds, and enriched this Ass-Kicking life. Even if they aren't still here right now, and who knows which options will come next, but I choose to be ready.

And for now, choose to listen to this...

The End of the World

(2015)

The Sky Is Falling, you guys.

In 11 years of wildland fire experience, I don't remember a time when the underlying tremors throughout the troops felt like this. Even huge fires that last for months, conflagrations like the Carleton Complex last year - after a few days of hell... a sense of "we got this" would settle in and order would prevail.

In this, it hasn't happened yet. Wave after wave of bad weather, tragedy, homes by the scores lost across the state, and in the fire world, a cry for help. We are underfunded, understaffed, overwhelmed. Just when things start to settle out and forces start to get in place, a new barrage of fire starts and turns and runs take over and the lifesaving choice is only to pull back and regroup, assuming there are any resources to do it.

Richard Wheeler. Tom Zbyszewski. Andrew Zajac. Know the names. Young men all. Strong, vibrant, alive. And now they are gone. Dying one of the most horrific deaths imaginable in a fight to stop the wall of flame sweeping through the communities of Twisp and Winthrop.

The whole town of Tonasket is under evacuation right now.

Countless head of cattle, creatures of all kinds have lost the race with the flame front.

This is a terrible summer.

There cannot be enough prayers, enough hearts open to help, enough understanding minds to skate to the puck and get ahead of the tragedy. Be ready, be vigilant, be smart. Like we are taught in fire training: Look up, look down, look all around. There is need and possibility and risk everywhere.

Life goes on all over the country, people cross-fitting and school shopping and painting nails as if the world wasn't ending. And it's not, really. But drowning in the thick smoke that is three counties wide, it's hard to remember.

Next time you buy a latte, like me, think of the ones that are eating rehydrated beef stroganoff out of an MRE bag at the top of Mt. Leona on the Stickpin fire. The ones who haven't showered for 11 days. The ones who haven't had a toilet to sit on all summer. Next time you get pissed about the heat outside your bedroom window or the smokey tinge on your pillowcase, think about they guys and girls digging out hollows in the pine needles and dirt to sleep for a couple hours, the ones with a mean case of jock itch and blisters that would make your crabby grandpa cry. It's a real fight out there and it isn't about a few trees. It's about your Aunt Ellen's house. And the ranch that's been in the family, supporting the family for three generations. It's about entire hay fields, life savings, family memories lost forever.

And think about Tom, and Andrew and Richard. Their families. Their crews.

This fire season is far from over. Hold them up. Because the sky IS falling. Help us catch it.


http://www.wffoundation.org

On Being Necessary

One of the biggest struggles I have is feeling like an unimportant human being. I am awfully good at using stuff: food, water, air, space, time, money, coffee, beer... I can consume like no other. But when it comes to producing, to being useful, it's a stretch to think of anything that I am Vitally Important for.

I have always had a philosophical problem with the idea held by some people that my worth as a person is warranted by my offspring. As if by raising the next generation of "world changers" or giving birth to the future Dalai Lama I will somehow make up for being born myself. Since I was a small child I have felt an almost desperate sense of Needing to Be Important. I want to be the world changer, the Dalai Lama, myself. Anybody with a uterus can crank out kids, and some of the best people in the history of the world have come from the worst parents, and vice versa, so I have a hard time swallowing the thought that my redemption comes through the Mighty People that I have borne. Motherhood is a high calling, and for most of my life, it remains true that if I am necessary anywhere as a human being, it is in this capacity. Not because I am raising the next president of the United States or the future Miss America, but because I am raising human beings, and like me, and like you, they need love.

I have always yearned to do more, to be more, to be Necessary, on a less biological and instinctive scale. I am necessary to my children because nature dictates it. If I do my job well, at some point I will not longer be necessary to them at all, and then I have succeeded in producing something. Lord willing it will be something good - four something goods - so far it seems like it might work out. But when that project is complete, where is my place in the cosmos? How will I then become necessary again? And to whom? Or do I get parked in the junk yard with the other broken down unnecessaries that haven't found a permanent place for when they're not dead yet?

I want to be Unequivocally Important in this life. I want people hanging on my every written word, and lives radically changed because I am there to make a difference.

Romantically, I am not necessary to anyone. As much as I want to be the last thing Some One thinks about at night and the first thing that Some One reaches for in the morning, I am needed by no one. I have made the foolish mistake a thousand times over of falling in love with someone, allowing them to become "necessary" to me, when I am nothing but an option to them - if that. No one person needs me at the end of the day to tell their stories to, lean their head on, wrap their arms around. I am no body's best friend, confidant, lover, resting place. And no amount of needing from me makes me necessary to them. It's like an empty sucking vacuum in space. It's survivable, but it sure isn't fun. Which begs the question - what is actually necessary? It feels necessary to be loved by one person above all others, but time has proved the sad truth that it isn't. It feels necessary to be touched, and adored and heard and known, but again, no one I know is dying of singleness. It feels like dying sometimes. Like being buried alive. Romance isn't necessary.

But Love is necessary, and it goes on in spite of the pain, or loneliness, or the feeling of NEEDING that pervades everything. Love isn't the thing that you get from someone else, the touches, the feels - it's the thing that you give. We are all programmed to think that love is something we receive from the outside in, but the reality is that love comes from within us as whole human beings. And for all of the feeling needy, I have a lot of love to give even when it doesn't seem like it's coming in from anywhere.

Love is the thing that makes me necessary. It's the Thing of Vital Importance that I have to give the world. I am not building skyscrapers or raising people from the dead, but I am necessary in the choices that I make out of love every day. I have learned this from the people who have given me love and met my needs, both accidentally and intentionally. The big hug. The hand on the shoulder. The cold beer, or $20 to help out. The phone call out of the blue or random act of kindness. The George Baileys in this life that have given up their big suitcases to take care of a community, and the Father Darlings who have packed their dreams into a drawer to only look at occasionally in exchange for loving a family. The people that have saved my life by just Being There, by telling me I am Worthy, and I am Strong, and I can move ahead. These are the things that I have received and the things that I can give that might make the difference in the day or the month or the year or the life of a total stranger or my best friend. This is necessary.

Love is hard to find…

On Making Good Impressions in Fire camp (2015)

I've learned a few things on this fire assignment. Like, for instance, the importance of maintaining composure in the face of The Ultimate Arachnid Violation, or how to best wear side dishes as an accessory. I even had a swift lesson in the effect of slope degree on streams of pee. It's been informative, and in addition to bringing home a decent paycheck, I'd like to think I've also invested in personal growth and development in the areas of humility and avoidance of human contact.
In the interest of stymying ego growth, I've employed tactics that stretch creatively beyond the garden variety fire camp faux pas. No dirty underwear stuck to Nomex Velcro or toilet paper on the boots at briefing. Not even an old toothpaste stain on my shirt. Nope, I've been exploring outside the old standbys.

Today there was a spider on me.
A huge. Brown. Fuzzy. Spider.
It was very difficult for me. Every lesson in self control for my WHOLE LIFE went flashing before my eyes.
No big deal. I just flicked him off of my nomex. Onto my belt. Then under my shirt. And into my pocket.
I didn't panic. I didn't cry. Very much. The very cool, very badass Task Force Leader that I've spent a week with didn't even laugh at me. Very much. I didn't even kill the spider. Or pass out. I tried to disguise the extra-high-pitched tone of my voice and my super sweaty palms. I'm not sure he bought it since he gave me a kind of amused Knowing Look. But I was very brave. Considering.
I will never sleep again.
Which is probably for the best, since three nights ago I was sleeping fitfully in my rig, as always, trying to find a way to accommodate a forever aching shoulder, and something possessed me at about one AM to wake up and unplug my phone where it was charging next to me. I have no idea why, but it seemed necessary at that exact moment.
Apparently it seemed necessary at that exact moment for the semi-truck parked perpendicular to me to fire up his diesel engine and shine his bright headlights into my car as well. In my delirium, all I could think was that in unplugging my phone I had somehow triggered the activation of the truck so I quickly and apologetically plugged my phone back in. It didn't work and the truck kept running. For.Ev.Er. So uncool. I'm just glad the weird communications guy in the tiny green tent that keeps getting closer to my rig wasn't looking in my windows to witness my totally illogical reflex. That I know of.
I can't understand what his attraction to me could be after the other evening when I wore a decent sized bit of tater-tot casserole around on my shirt for hours. I mean, some food is sexy, but tater-tot casserole on your left boob is a stretch. Explain to me How I could not notice a solid ounce of casserole on my chest, but I can still feel the "massive" spider weighing less than a microgram, crawling All. Over. My. Body.
In the hours since the Spider Incident, I have quelled recurrent panic attacks by imaging him a friendly, curious little fellow who wants to be a firefighter. Either he's the same spider I saw crawling up the Safety Officer's leg earlier, or there's an entire army of the bulbous brown monsters in this dust bowl where I sit. For my own sanity I have to believe he is a hardy and determined individual. Only one. I'm totally writing a children's book. Nevermind that the illustrations will give me night terrors.
I'm all about finding new and glorious ways to make sure that 300 burly firefighters know with all certainty what a complete dork I am. It's taken me a minute or two to realize that at some point in the last decade working on fires that I have transitioned from the Cute Girl in fire camp to the Frumpy Mom in fire camp. It's a tough pill to swallow when the blue eyed faller in the Stihl ball cap is actually flirting with the red headed engine boss next to me, and doesn't even know I exist. Curses. Of course it takes a few unacknowledged witty comebacks before I realize that he doesn't hear a thing I'm saying because Pippi Longstalking is redoing her braids. #heartbreak
That's ok. I'm older and wiser now, and most of my self esteem doesn't stem from the opinions of bad ass twenty something hot shots and their comrades. I'm not sure where it stems from, or some days if it stems at all, but I'll concede the fight. I'm just happy to be out here, making a fool of myself and a few bucks.

Author's note: commo guy is actually very nice, and hasn't ever looked in my windows. That I know of. (In case KP ever stumbles across this blog)