Friday, April 28, 2006

One of the reasons I was reluctant to move back here . . .

I took the kids to Wheeler Farm today. It was very crowded—mostly by daycares and elementary school field trips, but also by moms with kids. I really felt out of it when I noticed that 95% of the moms were dressed to the hilt. We’re talking ultra-styled hair, designer clothes, fake nails, flashy earrings and other jewelry, full makeup and fake tans. Of course, they all had tiny little flip-flops (or high-heeled sandals) and capris, and matching handbags. The little Chloes and and Kesslers and Sydneys were, for the most part, all Gapped out as well. Sheesh! To go to the farm!

The thing that bothered me most: I suddenly felt ugly. I mean, it’s one thing to think these chics are crazy (I do)—but it’s another, and somehow shameful IMO, to let them make me feel insecure. But I did. But I showed them, didn’t I. I came home and wrote a scathing blog about their vanity. Take that!

(Their legs were shaved, too. Or probably lasered.)

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Dream

So I dreamed this afternoon (yes, I got a nap today!) that I was younger—maybe high school or college age, some age when I was boy crazy. In my dream, I was fiercely interested in this guy who was playing guitar in a band (a bit from my real past, since I went through an “infatuation with musicians, some of them bad-boys” phase). I was interested in all the guys in the band, actually, but this one in particular. Anyway, they were playing and I picked up my guitar and started playing and I was REALLY good. The guys even stopped playing to listen and congratulate me (“dude!”). And it was just this warm, triumphant feeling to know that I had held my own with them, earned their respect, and caught the eye of “the” guy.

In analyzing this dream I think that that yearning is still a big part of me. Not the yearning to catch the eye of a certain guy romantically (I am very, very happily married), but the yearning to prove myself in the eyes of the world. Who is the world? I don’t know. My writing friends, maybe. Other women. I’m not sure. But to pick something up artistically (maybe my writing, maybe singing or something else) and prove myself, and feel the accomplishment of having done it well and earned the respect of others whose work I admire.

I have mixed feelings about this. Is it all bad to want to earn the respect of others? It spurs me on to greater achievement. But I think it would be better if I could transfer my desire for approval to God and God only. Trying to please other people will never fully satisfy in the end. (Witness my experience when my story won first place in the contest: nobody cared. Nobody said “congrats.” Even the people in my writing group were silent. Maybe they were jealous. I don’t know. Wait—I take that back—there were one or two comments from strangers who read it who said they liked it. That was nice.) My writing is never going to change the world. I like to think it might change a life, or at least a mind or a mood. But I really have no control over that. I need to make that not be my measure of success.

But if I have “pleasing God” as my goal, how do I know when I’ve reached it? Sometimes he is so silent. (Other times he is not, granted.) And maybe that would be bad for my ego, going around so sure that I am God’s mouthpiece or something. I don’t know about this.

All I know is this: God created me. God gave me both the yearning to please and the yearning to write. If I can figure out how to incorporate the satisfaction of these yearnings into my life without letting it interfere with other important things, I will be pleasing him—or at least not displeasing him.

Naming Things

Conversation:
P: Mommy, look at me.
M: Yes, I see you.
P: Mommy, LOOK.
M: Yes, I see you, P.
P: Mommy, look at me!
M: Yes, I see you wearing a glove.
(P trots off with a satisfied, proud chuckle, holding his glove high.)

So I’ve been thinking about the magic of that word “glove,” how mentioning it, naming it, was what satisfied P. The same thing satisfies me—when I read a book, or talk to a friend, and hear or read something that is familiar to me, when an experience or emotion of mine is named by someone else, I feel understood, satisfied, accepted.

Maybe that’s part of what draws me to music. Some pieces of music just seem to name emotions better than others. A certain piece might name to me the feeling I felt when I made myself do something really hard (break off an engagement). Or name that highest of high feelings that comes when I discover that I am liked by the object of my adoration (first love). Or the lonely, nostalgic feeling of fall.

I think the joy that I get when I am truly named is what causes me to want to write. I want to be the one that names, and that brings that joy to others.

In case you were wondering . . .

It is impossible to sweep a kitchen floor with a cat attached to the broom.

(Pippin has a love-hate relationship with our broom. He must think it’s a relative.)

(See the photo above.)

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

How stupid can I get?

So I was cleaning out my flowerbed, and I was musing about all these little shoots of weeds I don't recognize from last year.

Hmmm. Those little shoots look familiar. In fact, they look an awful lot like . . . like . . . like the little shoots I see under my maple trees.

That grow from the little "helicopter" seeds that the maple trees drop.

The helicopter seeds that were abundantly mixed with grass clippings when we mowed the lawn the last time in the fall.

The grass clippings that I spread on the flower bed for mulch.

DUH!!!!!!