Pharisees

The Pharisees had their traditions.  They added rules.  Today, they would be lawyers.  Seriously.  One thing I really miss about teaching in Arkansas is getting to teach world lit I survey.  All of literature from the beginning of literature to about 1600.  And what is best about that is that most literature is based on religious tenets and beliefs.  All governments are based on some sort of moral conception of the universe, and most societies base their morals on their predominant religion.

Which is why a lot of people are scared to live in an atheist society.  If you have surgery and get anesthesia, you can see the relationship between the words atheist and aesthete.  Anesthesia literally means without sensation.  The prefix a/an means without.  Theist means god, so a monotheist worships one God, and a polytheist worships many, such as the Hindus.  Atheist means without a god. 

Funny how the introduction of Islam was not the true religion, but it still was an improvement, or was closer to the truth, because it took the Arabic people descended from Ishmael from a polytheist to a monotheist society.  "No God but God" was their chant.  Nearly every principle found in the Bible is found in the Quran.  Yes, they made Joseph a prophet, and added and played loose with quite a bit.  Still, it got the nation rid of all those stupid graven images.

Time pollutes things.  We get careless or selfish or some other agenda pops up.  Even in language.  I say "ya'll" all the time even knowing it means all of you.  Today I saw an ad for a product called "whonu".  Why can't they say Who Knew?  I understand why my students are using these abbreviations like oic and lol and ttyl.  It's a lot easier if you are texting on a keyboard the size of Barbie's hands.

In view of all that, it amazes me that the Bible has maintained its integrity.  That must be some serious holy spirit.  The military moves soldiers to a new fort at least once every three years.  "Familiarity breeds contempt" and they want the troops to maintain readiness for battle.  Stay on your toes.  I was thinking about what allows us to treat each other harshly or with contempt.  We get used to each other and take each other for granted.  Sometimes I wonder if we are even familiar with the object of our contempt in the first place.  My boss treats me like I'm a fool but she doesn't even know me, never took any time or made any effort to understand me, to know what makes me tick.

Like, have you seen the movie "Dead Poet's Society"?  Yeah, you're right.  I like that one.  There's a subplot in that movie about a boy who is at the prep school and is a talented actor.  Extremely gifted brilliant even.  It's after the depression and his parents went through that time period, and they do not want their good boy to be an actor.  They want him to have a real solid dependable job.  I don't remember what they want him to study, doctor, lawyer, accountant.  Something like that

He just wants to act.  They take him out of prep school and tell him he's headed to military academy on the train the next morning.  He has no choice.

Oh but he does.  His father has a gun in his study.  The boy goes inside and gets it, and uses it.  He commits suicide.  If he can't live doing what he loves, and must live doing what he abhors, he would prefer to end his life.

Now that is a hard choice to face.  When the parents hear the bang, the father rushes to his study.  You don't see the boy; the scene lasts maybe ten seconds.  All you see is the father opening the door to a darkened room, and then his voice breaking as he says, "Oh, my baby boy."

I suppose some regret in that father's heart for forcing such a choice on his child.  There is no doubt the father loves his son, and that scene (yes it is a made up story) breaks your heart when you hear his voice breaking down.  But there are real people like that.  Can you love someone without knowing who they are, what they think, what they want?  Evidently.

Isn't it sad humans can get so far away from each other that all the love in the world can't help them overcome their differences?  People used to tell me when the girls were teenagers that I was the boss and just go in their rooms and rip the rock star calendars off the wall.  For what?  So they can hate me more, and then secretly plot the days till they can move out and hook up with rock stars?  That's what my mother did.  I didn't want rock stars, just education.  But she made it so impossible for me to live at home, between her and my father I had to go.  I didn't have any direction to go towards.  I just had a direction to leave behind.  Something to get away from.

Sunday our talk was about relying on Jehovah.  Leslie's husband Chris gave it.  He started talking about an example in the bible of someone who relied on Jehovah when no one else understood what they were going through.  I thought wow, that should be Hannah, but he'll probably talk about some guy in the bible.

He turned to 1 Samuel and we read about Hannah and how no one except Jehovah understood why she was so hurt.  Even Elkanah didn't get it, said what do you want with sons when you have me?  Chris says:  "Some people just don't know what to say."  That's so funny.  Elkanah was stupid when it came to his wife's desire to have a child.  Socially inept, awkward, whatever you want to call it.  He just didn't get it.  Jehovah did.  That's all.

Hannah got to have her babies finally, but it was many years of listening to Peninah brag about her babies.  It takes nine months to make one, and she bragged about more than one, so that's a long time to be in Hannah's shoes.

I suppose my mother might love me, or the idea of me.  I don't think she knows who I am, or wants to know.  She doesn't understand books and reading and writing and wanting to be in words all the time.  For the last two days I wore only black and white to school.  Why?  Because I don't have to waste my brain on matching anything.  I  just want to get dressed and get on with what matters.  And my mother cares about clothes and how you look and varying your fashion.  I don't.  I mean, it's nice to look nice.  I wish I was gorgeous.  But I would rather have a half hour a day to blog a lot more than a half hour to piddle around in the closet.  It's just not that interesting.

Here, the words, now that is engaging.  I have a favorite word, a favorite letter, a favorite Bible verse (lots of them) a favorite quote, book, poem, saying, lyric.  I don't have a favorite outfit.  Am I decent and socially acceptable?  Fine, let's go.

I am such a disappointment to her.  I have tried to be who she wanted me to be, and it isn't in me.  I was so depressed from 17-18 that I barely functioned.  I had a quiet little nervous breakdown and no one bothered to see it.  Here's a quote I like:  Trying to be someone else wastes the person you really are.

I got tired of wasting me, my brain, my life.  Here is what is ironic.  She is such a disappointment to me.  Last time we were there, before she threw us out, we went to meeting with her.  All the way home, a 20 minute drive, she kept asking us did we see this sister, that family, those brothers, and all she could do was criticize their appearances.  Some of those spiritual kin did not seem to have much money, so I don't know how she expected them to dress better or have a new car in the parking lot.  I don't know if Jehovah feels reproached over a 1974 panel van with duct tape over one of the windows parked at His house on Sunday morning.  But I got so tired of hearing her whine about how no one met the standards she was busy setting on Jehovah's behalf.

I'm pretty sure that we didn't meet that standard either.  We are decent and covered, but we don't look like a runner up in the Miss New Mexico pageant like she was.  So we disappoint her.  There was a brother five years younger than me named Charlie and when I was 12 and he was 7 he asked me to marry him.  Well, I didn't hold him to that, and he married a nice girl named Shawn and they had babies nearly the exact ages of my babies.  And they are thin and blonde and my mother goes on and on about them.  She never goes on and on about my girls.

That's pretty tough to bear.  I don't bear it anymore.  I just stay away.  The whole time she does stuff like this the word going on in the back of my mind is "Pharisee."  Quit praying where everybody can see you Mother.  Quit feeling so righteous because you are wearing a $300 belt from QVC to meeting.  Quit being so concerned with your additions that you lose sight of the will of God.  Quit being shallow.  

I hate shallow people.  When Sara was here to spend a month with us, a sister who never speaks to my daughters at the Hall runs up to Sara and wants to meet her.  Sara is thin and wearing a Kathy purse and Steve Madden shoes and leopard striped jewelry.  She's cool.

My kids are cool.  And smart.  Just not thin and wearing high heels.  I'm doing everything I can to get life for them, and then they go to the Hall to be hurt.  You are not serving people, I say.  Only trust in Jehovah.  No one else matters.

*****

Sometimes I think it is good the end has not come yet.  All the sheep are not gathered, the number of the anointed is not sealed, and I don't know if I am ready to make it, if the girls are, if I am too critical and my mother too shallow and we need this time to balance ourselves.  As I approach 50 next year, I absolutely understand how we can live eternally, and still have things to learn. 

childcare 101

I meant to blog about Benjamin last night, but I ended up trying to get my beauty sleep.  It didn't work, sigh.  When I logged in just now, I saw where the picture of Benjamin from yesterday was my 100th blog.  Whew.  I didn't know if I could make this work that long or not.  So this will be blog #101, which is a generic term for a college course.  Right now I am teaching English writing 1700 (seminar for seniors) and introduction to creative writing 0050 and three sections of English comp I 0005 (for freshmen).  But the numbering system here is strange.  Back home, those classes would be numbered 1013, 2023, and 4023.  Anyhow, here is where I am.

Benjamin's grandparents were pregnant with Benjamin's father when I was about five years old.  I am trying to do math (a four-letter word) and what I've decided is Ben's papa is in his mid 40's.  I thanked Jehovah last night, as I always do, for something.  But this time it was different.  I thanked him for something that was not.  I thanked him I was not the parent of a little one.  I am too old for that now.

I know what you're thinking.  If Carly was having a baby, or Kim (I say Carly because she is firstborn, but that doesn't mean squat really) there would be baby pictures everyday on here and I'd be the overwhelming grandparent everyone hates to be seated next to during a long wait in a doctor's office.  Maybe.  But I'm content not to find out.

Anyhow, Ben's grandfather is a handy guy.  I respect him more than I can say.  Leslie commented during the WT on Sunday about elders that she had several spiritual fathers back in Philly and she considers our WT conductor her spiritual father here.  At first I thought oh come on, really?  But of course she does; she's 22 or so.  I'm his age so he doesn't strike me as paternal.  I respect him, but I just don't see him as fatherly to me.  But Ben's grandfather, yes.  I'd turn to him for anything and have absolute trust in him.

When Kimberly was five, she had her tonsils out, and the following week an artery started bleeding and she had a second operation in the middle of the night.  Both times, Tom and Sherry were there.  When Kim came out of recovery, it was after midnight, and I said thank you Tom and ya'll can go home now; she is okay.

He said, "I'm here for Kimberly's mother too."  And he took my hand and said a prayer for us both.  Unable to say goodnight when he left, I just nodded, about to bawl.

So when Leslie was commenting about that on Sunday, I was thinking of Tom and Kimberly and Sherry and spiritual parents of my own ~ thinking about this grandbaby that Tom and Sherry now have and what kind of grandparents they turned out to be.

It's really funny, because I have to email them every so often and say hey, send me a new picture of that boy!  Maybe they are afraid of becoming those kinds of grandparents in waiting rooms who have photo albums in their bags.  So this is the latest picture.  I laughed with joy over seeing him.  His face reveals both his parents and half his grandparents in that little smile.  Here we are, 6,000 years removed from perfection, who knows how deteriorated the coding in our DNA is, but we go downhill a lot faster than Methusaleh, for sure, yet look how sweet this little boy is. 

His grandfather made him a child-sized podium so he can "Play Kingdom Hall."  I am so delighted by this idea I can hardly contain myself.  I am thinking of looking for a child-sized brief case to contribute to his "playing out in service" and I would like to bake him a pie to "play get-together."  I'd like to send a scaled down name tag from conventions so he could "Play DC."

Bryan is right in his poem.  You can't get this kind of family anywhere else.  Although I have yet to meet Benjamin in person, he is as real to me as the children in my own congregation, as often in my prayers, and as much joy in my heart.  He doesn't know me, but I love him already.

Benjamin

I'm going to write about this little guy tonight.  But the picture is on my day computer, so I'm putting him up here now!  His Grandpa said it was okay.  :)

School

I am posting this on the Sunday before school starts here in Pennsylvania.  We have such long winters that we have to squeeze out every iota of summer as long as we can.  In the south, school started mostly last week, but who cares, because you still have weekends of fun for about four more months, then a few months of hoodies, of jackets, for skinny people even coats, but no snow, no salted roadways, no plows at 5:00 a.m. in the eerie glow of daybreak preparing the grids for traffic.

I love school.  I wonder sometimes, in thinking about the Israelites, if we will home-school in the new world.  How will we educate the resurrected?  I don't know.  I just couldn't wait for the first day of first grade, and anytime my parents made me stay home sick, I was sick another way.  I would lie and say I was okay to get to go to school. 

Wasn't just because I wanted out of the house either.  I did want to be away from my house as much as possible, but I wanted to be in school if it was open.  I was pretty much a hermit with two part time jobs as a teenager just because of that.  And I could get lost in a book so easily, so happily. 

Still. 

In Arkansas, a lot of parents chose to home-school their children, and I admire them.  I would never do that.  Supposedly I am more qualified than a lot of people, and I was criticized for not doing this, but I never once even thought about home-schooling.  If it crossed my mind it was accompanied by hysterical laughter.

Are you kidding me? 

The best thing about school was my children had to face the Pledge of Allegiance every day.  During the primaries for a presidential election in 2004, my daughter wrote a position paper on why she voted the theocracy ticket rather than the democratic or republican.  They learned to get along with a variety of people, some nice, some not, and they learned to keep to a schedule and say no to drugs and peer pressure.

The state of Arkansas requires home-schooled children to take a competency test every spring and then to submit notarized scores to the school board as proof of compliance with the law that children must be educated through age 16.  Sadly, some of the members of the congregation were not in compliance with this law.  This was called to the attention of the Circuit Overseer, and in several congregations announcements were made that parents should obey Caesar in this too just like paying taxes.

After that meeting, standing in the back of the hall, an elder stated that in this particular congregation, no effort would be made to insure parents actually did so and parents should be guided by their conscience.

My sadness is overwhelming because I can name five children who can not read above fourth grade level, and they are the same ages as my children.  My fear is in expectation that a reporter will figure this out and the headlines in the paper will read:  Jehovah Witness Cult Children Ignorant

And that is such a reproach.  I am grateful everyday it has not happened.

There is a song we sang a few weeks ago, and I have been listening to it in my head as my subconscious jukebox shuffles my music.  Here is the line:

Oh what love God's son for us showed, when he left his Father's abode
that with men he might live ...

It doesn't say the Christ for us showed, or Jesus, but God's son.  It puts the emphasis both by words and musical accent on the familial relationship between Jehovah and his firstborn son, Jesus.  You know that phrase "only-begotten" son?  It literally means Jehovah begat Jesus in King James' linguistics.  The tense, beget, begat, begotten.

And I had never thought of it quite like the song put it, that it took a lot of love for humans for Jesus to leave his Father's presence.  He was very content being there. 

A Watchtower a few months ago mentioned that Jesus prayed for Jehovah's will to be done, as he was crucified on the stake, for this burden to be lifted from him.  He was not saying I don't want to do this.  He was still willing to die, but he didn't want to die branded as a blasphemer to his Father. 

He wanted no reproach to his Father's name.  He also left us a model to follow closely.  My goal this year is to do all things to reflect well on the name Jehovah's Witnesses.  I'm determined to be nice to everyone, to control my temper and my tongue, and to not reproach my God.

Big Girl Panties

The girls have a phrase:  put on your big girl panties and deal with it.  I think it means you don't wear diapers anymore so stop whining.  So, I wallowed in my mother's notecard for a few days, but it is time, as the saying goes, to put on the big girl panties and deal with it.

(Thank you for indulging me though).

So today, as I headed for my office, I was behind a big white pick-up truck.  And I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it, but something was "off".  I was trying to see the driver and passenger, and I was looking all over the truck, and I just couldn't figure out why my alarm bell was going off.  Sometimes that bell goes off just before something awful, so I try to listen to it.  (It evidently does not work for earthquakes). 

Then I realized what it was.  The tag had a diamond in the middle of it.  That's right!  It had Arkansas tags, so I got to feel homesick in a nice little highway way.

And I have been thinking of late about Brian.  I went to school for three years in Arkansas with Brian.  We had a lot in common as we both grew up as Jehovah's Witnesses.  He was no longer interested in being one.  But I could appreciate his poems in a way no one else could. 

I was thinking about Sister Scully and my girls and all of the sisters who have loved ones who have not gotten active in the truth.  Or who are actually disfellowshipped.  The end is approaching and some of us are anxious over where everyone stands now, will stand soon, what the survivor rate will be.

Also, I was considering my own life, how the whole six years I was out of the truth part of it stayed with me.  It might have looked like I was in the world, but in my head, I still used the name Jehovah when I thought about God, still was not afraid of the end of the world or my dying and going to hell.

So I wanted to share this poem (it is a prose poem, does not rhyme, is instead reliant on imagery and language for its poetic elements) for those of you who dare not give up hope.  I did change one word, indicated by the **.

There are days

There are days I want to believe so badly.  The twinge when
news of war in the Holy Land, or famine, or pestilence,
when Revelation 6 comes screaming back into my head
unbidden and I wonder, I wonder if I was wrong to search
elsewhere for that which transcends, if soon the day will
come when my old family will be the only ones left standing
strong for God in the face of the wild beast with seven heads
and ten horns and on those horns ten diadems and on its
heads blasphemous names . . . See what I mean?  Most days I
wonder if I'll ever be free of it, of the songs that insinuate
themselves into rotation on the unconscious jukebox.  It's
just wrong to go from I ain't saying she's a golddigger to We
thank you, Jehovah, especially since I only remember half the
chorus now.  And yet, I never felt more accepted, more part
of a family.  I've never gotten that anywhere else, and really,
I'll never get it again, even if I went back.  You can't pray a
lie, Huck said, and you can only live one for so long.  But
sometimes I still wonder if I've *messed* up, if I'll wave to my
parents as I die at Armageddon and say "you were right."

This is from Brian's collection published by Louisiana University Press entitled "A Witness in Exile."

I T Y

So many hard words end with the letters ITY.  I notice words and letters.  I have about 700 fonts loaded on my office computer just because I like artistic letters.  Yes, I had a calligraphy set as a teenager.

I am thinking this morning of responsibility.  A woman wrote into Dear Abby in today's paper that after a difficult divorce, her grown children still blame her entirely and she has to "walk on eggs" around them in order to continue seeing her grandchildren.  What kind of adult children do not understand that it takes two to tango?  That no single person on the planet is without flaw, so probably daddy contributed something to mom's angst even if he didn't mean to?  And haven't we enough evidence of that?  That even when you love someone with your entire being, you still let them down?

I have let my children down so often.  I don't know some days how I can keep living with myself.  When Kim was in first grade, I was PTA president at her school.  A virus ran through the entire population which resulted in 60% absentee rates.  In our household, Kim got it first.  One night, after a long day of being a mom and president and wife and maid and banker and cook I was worn out.  Kim was just sitting like a zombie on this chair in the living room, and I told her to wash up and go to bed.  She said she couldn't get up.  I said get up or I'll wear your butt out with a belt.  Why she believed me, I don't know.  I must have said it really mean, because I was not a butt buster ever.  I could never aim to hit them on their tender bottoms.  I tried a few times, but I would look down at my baby lying there crying, and I could not do it.  I don't know how anybody can.  I'm not criticizing anyone's parenting.  I'm saying I made those little butts in my belly.  I have struck out of anger, hit shoulders and slapped them and I'm ashamed of this.  But to calmly administer lashes, no.  That is my mother, not me.  Anyway, Kim must have believed something because she got up, but it looked like it hurt her to get up.  She was literally dragging.

The next week, I had the virus, and when I felt how bad it was, how much dragging I had to do, I felt like slime for not being more sympathetic to her.  I apologized then and now too.  She doesn't remember this.  She remembers plenty of other things as there have been so many.

I am sitting here with tears flowing down my cheeks just remembering.  I have never been more aware of my imperfections in any aspect of my life quite like I am as a mother.  I just want to be perfect for them.  I love them so much.  Those failures are the hardest to bear.  But I don't pretend I've been a perfect mom.

It takes a lot of humility to take that kind of responsibility.  Sometimes I think we can be too humble.  That was a problem with Abel.  He was so quick to make excuses when he showed something inappropriate on his TV.  Eventually he apologized, but he jumped on all the reasons it was not his fault first.  And I cannot be with someone like that.  I am too quick to apologize and admit my mistakes to the point that I become that wife writing Dear Abby.  Low self-esteem can masquerade as humility.  Balance is the key to so many things.

I am thinking also of charity, and I am still thinking about my mother.  A friend emailed me in response to yesterday's blog that she wonders what her daughter might say about her.  I would like to point out a major difference.  My mother does not treat me the way I want to be treated as her daughter.  But she does not treat me the way I want to be treated as her spiritual sister.  I would not treat a stray dog on the street the way my mother treats my daughters.  She has no charity in her heart for us.  I have asked her for economic help one time in my life and I was sorry for it ever after.  In 1994 David had to have orthopedic surgery and was off work for five weeks.  We had to go on food stamps, but you cannot buy detergent with food stamps.

I asked her for laundry supplies because the girls were in school and I literally had nowhere else to turn.  She sent a box of Tide over with my father and a single grocery bag filled with bounce, suave shampoo, a few other things.  She never asked us if we needed additional help later, and she was gainfully employed and happily married at the time to a man with a very comfortable station in life.

Yesterday, I was so crushed by her letter and yet so relieved in a way, like the straw broke my camel's back and I give up.  Towel thrown.  I wanted to write her back, but what left is there to say between us?  She has always done every possible thing she can to ignore my facility with language, to ridicule my writing.  I thought well what would I say to her if I was going to write her a letter?  And that became yesterday's blog.  I did not write her, but I sent her a printed copy of the blog.  And maybe that was wrong.  Not to her especially, but to you.  I used this medium to pursue my own agenda.

But, I take responsibility for that and have enough humility to admit that was not a bright shining moment in my life.  I trust you have enough charity for me to love me anyway, and that is why you are not my mother, but my sisters.  My mother ended her note by saying she did love me.  Maybe she does.  Maybe she thinks backs to moments like my standing in a little red wagon and feels regret for her choices.  But there is also this adage:  Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  She seems incapable of change, of moving forward in our relationship.  It has to be her way or the highway.  She even said that in my childhood:  My way or the highway.  See, I got some of that poetry from her.

I pick the highway.  I want different results.

Mother's Day

My mother got baptized three months after I did.  In 1986 she was disfellowshipped.  She left my father and remarried without proving that my father had broken their vows.  Of course, for a few years before that, she slowly fell out of the truth.  It isn't falling.  I think it should be called sliding out of the truth. 

I do not have a picture of her on my computer to post.  She is beautiful.  She was in the Miss New Mexico pageant in 1958 and was a runner-up.  She was six feet tall and had blonde hair, green eyes.  When I was about 11 she got sick (gall bladder) and lost a lot of weight and then she was a knock out again.

She got reinstated in 2007 just before we moved from Arkansas to Pennsylvania.  My former mother-in-law had grandchildren from her daughter, and she had very little interest in my daughters.  All I can say is my children did not win the grandmother lottery.

The last time I spoke to her on the phone was while we were in Reading for the DC in 2010.  So after a year, I thought I should check on her.  Every time we interact I am crushed.  But I have this long history of trying. 

Her phone was no longer in service.  Nor was her cell phone working.  I got a little uptight and googled the obituary page for her local newspaper.  She was not there, for which I am thankful.

I'm pretty sure my brother would not bother to tell me if that happened.

So I sent my mother a card like a doofus.  I sent her a picture of Carly and Kimberly at the DC.  I told her I had not been able to contact her.

She didn't reply right away.  Nearly a month later I got a generic card that read:

Cherri -
         Got your card ~ my new cell number is 940-xxx-xxxx.  I disconnected my home phone because it was just an extra expense I didn't need.  Cherri the past is the past.  Everybody has to answer for their own doings so I guess we all have to stand before Jehovah for what we do.  I'm sorry we can't get along.  Maybe someday we can.  We just don't see eye to eye on things.  Let's just leave it at that.  I am happy for you on your plans to possibly go to Saipan in 2013.  Hope it all works out for you.  I am glad the girls are well ~ just know Cherri that I do love you very much.

                                                                                Mom

She's right that we don't see eye to eye.  When I was a baby, she went back to work and left me with my father.  He was a raving alcoholic.  She told me stories when I was older how she would come home and I'd have diaper rash from being in a crappy diaper in my crib for five or six hours while my father was passed out on the couch.  When I got older, I could climb out of the crib, and she said I would drink his beer, his coffee, whatever was left laying around because I was hungry and thirsty.  Her most horrifying story is coming home and the man is passed out as usual and I have pulled my little red wagon up to the stove to reach the pot that is burning up with what might be chicken noodle soup left in the pan and she yells at me, "Baby no!" and I turn quickly to look at her and unbalance in the wagon and fall down.  I cry.

She is so relieved she didn't show up a split second later when I would have pulled the pan down into my face.

Thanks Dad.  All through my childhood I thought what a dog my father was for this.  Then I had my own two little girls, and I could barely leave them with anybody.  I was a total control freak on the girls because of these stories.  I did not want the cycle to continue.  But I would look at my babies and think how did my mother continue to go to work everyday leaving me in that situation? 

She says she didn't know what else to do.  And there were some days when the man didn't get drunk and I was fine when she got home.  She prayed for those days, is what she told me when I was a mother myself.

So yeah, I guess we don't see eye to eye on what it means to be a mother for sure.

I don't think my eye is a standard to go by.  I think everybody should be trying to see by Jehovah's standards and not what their eye tells them.

She also made me quit school my senior year.  Now, I love school more than anything except Jehovah and the truth and my own two daughters.  I wasn't as pretty as she was that I was going to find a man to take care of me and pay my bills.  She did a lot better the second time around; I can say that much for her. 

Nothing has ever been her fault.  She didn't know what else to do.  She did the best she could.  And we are a supreme disappointment to her.  I care about school and she cares about things.  She bought me so many pretty clothes.  I thought she loved me and that was her way to show it.  I grew up and figured out she just wanted me to look good because as her daughter I represented her, was an extension of her.

Now, my daughters and I are fat.  And I take full responsibility for that.  All my life I've been obsessed with having a full cupboard.  She told me my dad (who was awaiting disability from SSI in my infancy) had no money and we lived on water gravy and biscuits when I was little.  She couldn't work and breast feed, so I went on carnation milk with vitamin drops and sometimes they couldn't afford the vitamin drops. 

She wonders why I have food issues.  We are such a disappointment to her.  We don't see eye-to-eye and we should just leave it at that.  I can't decide if that means she doesn't want any future contact with us or not.

The girls do not want. 

She did give me her phone number.

I have not called.  I do not think I will.  I know.  She is not only my mother, but my spiritual sister.  Wouldn't I forgive anyone of you for hurting me?  I would have to if I want Jehovah to forgive me my many trespasses.

I can do that.  But I cannot go stand in line for anymore either.

Yankee Stadium

This is a plaque on the new Yankee Stadium regarding the 1958 convention.  Isn't this cool?  Thanks Sister Scully for sharing.

Earthquake

There was an earthquake in Virginia Tuesday and it shook even up here in Pennsylvania.  I have first-hand tornado experience from a lifetime in Oklahoma and have seen first-hand the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina.  We've now been to the flood museum in Johnstown and that was close enough to water for me.

It did give me the heebie jeebies in that when we drive to Ocean City across that Chesapeake Bay Bridge over all that water that all the car windows have to be down so if we slide off the bridge we can get out of the car and not be trapped inside like some movie.  I see that in movies all the time but I still can't believe you can't roll the window down after the car fills up and the pressure is equal.  I don't want to try it to disprove it, but I just don't believe it.  I also believe I could kick a window out in that dire of an ordeal.

I did not feel the quake at all.  I disbelieved that too but I was sitting under a hair dryer trying to ungreen my hair and very involved in reading Glamour Magazine.  I never allow myself to read entertainment magazines unless I am in a waiting room.  It was nice to be doing something just for fun, but when I read, I am totally engrossed.

The girls were home and Carly concisely summarized by saying she never wanted to do that again and would take 10 tornadoes to one earthquake.  Even our Chihuahua was a nervous wreck.  Kim said she was downstairs and it started with the baker's rack tinkling and then the dining room curtains waved and then the living room, and she could feel the tremor ripple through our house from one end to the other in the space of about six seconds.

I never in my life gave any thought to ever being exposed to an earthquake.  There was a very mild one in Oklahoma in 1999 and I did not feel that one either.  We are safe from nothing in this Satanic system, but we are safe from everything if we abide under Jehovah's wing.

That's the only best place for us little chicks.

Purple Triangles

The strangest little things sometimes remind me of our brothers who suffered so terribly in the Holocaust.

One of the best reasons I wanted the job in Pennsylvania was the proximity to Washington DC and the US Holocaust Museum.

The first time we went, we stepped into the train car.  It is not a replica, but one of the actual train cars that carried Jews, Roma, and our brothers and sisters to the camps. 

I don't believe (as you don't) in auras or the metaphysical.  I don't believe that emotions are embedded in physical things.  I don't believe walls can talk.  But I felt such a chill when I got on that train car.  Carly and Kimberly felt it too.  We stood there hushed, hurting, hot lumps of bawling rising in our throats before we finally limped out.

There is a room full of shoes taken as the prisoners stripped before getting into the showers.  There is a huge concrete post that was the corner of the electrified fences. 

You've seen the video and read the accounts in our literature.  When speakers sometimes ask rhetorical questions of the audience about who we'd like to meet in the resurrection, of course I have a long long list of names.  Women from the Bible.  Even a few of the guys.  David, for music.  Jubal, for pipes.  But I also always think of those who died during the Holocaust. 

Of all the people there against their will, our people were the only ones who could have gained their freedom by denying their faith.  Very few did.  What a witness that is for Jehovah to all the persecutors and the others in the camps.

I thought of all this because my neck and shoulders are very tender today from laying on the rim of that sink where they wash hair at the salon.  I mean scary tender in that I can hardly brush my hair, and can't decide if the worst thing is reaching up to do it or the feel of the brush on my sore neck.

For some reason I thought about how sore I'd be sleeping in one of the wide wooden bunks they have at the museum, or how I would feel riding packed like a sardine into that train in freezing temperatures, in melting heat.

There is so much suffering in this system.  There are so many ways to suffer.  Our bodies have such a vast array of things to go wrong.  Our feelings get trampled.  There is no getting ahead and hardly any staying at the status quo.  If the days were not cut short, no flesh would be saved. 

I will take some Tylenol PM and let my tired muscles repair themselves while I sleep.  Even with this gray hair and sore neck, I am in awe of the way the body will recover and keep living as best it can.  In a fear inspiring way, yes David, we are so wonderfully made.  I will be glad to meet him face to face someday.

As for you my sisters, I hope your suffering is as small as possible on this day, and every day.

Spiritual Autobiography

When I teach essay writing, one of the assignments is for a spiritual autobiography.  I don't mean it, in the context of a college classroom, as spiritual in the sense that we mean it as JW's.  The point for the students is to locate themselves within a larger context, to answer the question who they are on this planet.  If they need to compare themselves to others, no problem.  If they want to locate themselves as Jews in a Christian world or Asians in a Caucasian world (which is funny, because there are more Asians than any other ethnicity, but not in Johnstown.  In Johnstown all my students seem to think the world revolves around white Catholics.  When I tell them Kennedy was the first Catholic president of the U.S. they hardly believe me) that is fine too.

So, there are many ways to locate the self within a larger context.  I locate myself as a mom, as a JW, as a professor, a redhead, a Barbie doll lover, oh, we could go on all night.  A music lover, movie buff, budding chef.

Today, I relocated myself in another context.  My hair is red by birth, a nice auburn.  I know women are never supposed to be happy with their looks, and I'm not, but I like my hair.  Funny how we lose pigment in our hair but not our eyes.  Thank Jehovah my green eyes are not turning gray too.

I've been using henna from JustforRedheads.com for about ten years.  It really covered the gray naturally.  I am used to people telling me I have great color especially for my age.

But of late, the gray is coming in so fast that the auburn henna is hard put to keep up.  So I ordered "champagne" henna this time.  I was very happy with the result - a Nicole Kidman strawberry blondish color.  But the rest of my hair remained red from the years of henna.  So today my hairdresser, Jessica, stripped the red out.  Took a while - 20, 30, then 40 strength bleach, then color, all this waiting around while stuff develops up there.

I am so glad I'm not a cosmetologist.  I could not do that everyday for a job.  I barely got through today, and the back of my neck is tired from laying in the washing sink so many times.

Anyhow, my hair was green at one point.  It's fine now, and I'm really liking it, especially the idea of not being chained to the henna bottle to hide the gray in that high contrast red hair.  But it's still very very strawberry blonde.  No auburn about it.

And that is not how I have ever located myself in the world.  It has taken me all day to think about this, and I'm probably not done.  I like it, but who is it?

It's an older me.  Jehovah did not mean for us to get old.  Right now I could kick Eve's sorry rear end if she was around somewhere.  But I guess not.  She'd be so old she'd be a bag of dusty bones, and that would be good enough for her - she deserved it.  But not us.

She threw away perfection and she didn't have henna or Jessica.  After she died, Adam was left alone.  Did he miss her?  Did he remember saying this is at last flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones?

I have always marveled at the phrase "at last."  He must have been naming animals for a little while.  Finally, a mate for me, a completer.  I imagine being in the new world 999 years in saying something like:  this is at last my flesh and my bones the way I always dreamed of being.

And while I like the champagne strawberry blonde, I will never miss gray hair when that day comes.

Red Sails in the Sunset

I'm writing from my office.  I just got everything rearranged and cleaned and ready to get down to work tomorrow and get a lot done before the regular semester starts next Monday.  Sigh.  Today we cooked out - I'll try to get a pic from the girls to post.  I made a pasta salad to die for in our big bamboo bowl that is about 16 inches in diameter.  I learned to make that from Beverly.  I've learned all kinds of pasta things here, a lot of them from her, including pierogie lasagna.  Even when we leave here, I'm taking those two things with us.

Anyhow, the ribs turned out perfect and I didn't bake to heat up the house, (although the weather here is perfect today, a good reason to move here; however, February has 28 reasons to stay away) so we had a Louisiana Crunch Cake from Wally World and it's just been an okay day.  My house is straight the way I wanted it and now I can relax and focus on me and school a little bit.

I have a camera, and I'll try to figure it out and post pictures of my decorating this past month.  I redid my bedroom.  It was green and purple (I really did make it work) and I found a bedspread on sale . . .  and now the whole thing and the master bath is blue with a spa motif.  Very peaceful.

The only thing not perfect is I have red sheets on the bed right now, but they don't show.  I always make the bed, but I absolutely make it when the sheets don't match.  I had a code when I was married.  Red sails on the bed (sheets) mean it's that time and don't bother me.

I'm not going to lie.  Once in a while I left them on a few days longer than strictly necessary. 

It always strikes me as funny to be putting them on the bed now but I have discovered if you ever overflow, red sheets are the best ones to overflow on.  For a couple of years I was a river, but I had surgery and now I'm a normal woman again.

Stop laughing!  Normal is relative.

I took the girls to Denny's after the garage sale since we had a little surplus and it is three blocks from our house.  Carly likes breakfast food for dinner.  On the way home, the check engine light came on. 

A moment of gloom and doom:  I had $100 extra bucks and I figured the car was going to take it.  And part of me was hoping that was all it was going to take.  So, the girls' dad drove it to Advance where they will check it for free, and they gave him the code saying it was some little electronic gizmo that adjusts the air flow into the engine.  The air was too lean.  He fixed it for me.  I don't know what to think sometimes.  He can drive me crazy but he can help me out and no one else is over here to check on the widows and orphans, so if that scared Jared or Abel or anyone else off, so be it.

Of course, I fully realize the next time I see him he'll be driving me crazy and I'll be too chicken to complain about it after singing praises over the electronic gizmo.  I wonder sometimes what he says about me to his friends.

I'm going home.  I never understood someone who would not eat leftovers.  They ain't had any of my cooking to say that.

Idolatry

We had a super talk today by one of our own elders.  It was about idolatry.  I've heard talks about that before in the south, but here it's so much more relevant.  Every third house has the virgin Mary out in the yard, frequently with a planted bathtub framing her, protecting her from the elements.  Jon starts the talk out by relating the experiences of the people looking for the North Pole.  Maybe the South Pole.  I don't teach geography.  I do know that in Ebensburg they have an Admiral Peary Blvd and there is an Admiral Peary vo-tech up here.  I wonder if they teach exploring as a trade there.  Evidently, Robert Peary was from somewhere around here.


So, this team of explorers is chasing some mountains and the local Inuit guide is telling the scientists it is just mists, but they think it's a mountain range and they travel 150 miles trying to get there.  Evidently, you cannot arrive at mist.  They turned around and made it back to solid land just in the nick of time.  The ice started breaking up the following day.  There are lots of ways to die, but I sure hope if I ever have to do it, I am not freezing to death on an ice floe.

Isn't that the coolest sentence ever?  I hope I never have to die.  Who gets to say that?  Over seven million people.  But the rest of the earth's population fully expects to die someday.  There was an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" on the other day and Frank was telling Raymond someday he was going to die.  He was afraid of getting older, and he was having a little melt down.  Later Ray tells his mother she is going to die someday too.  It just made me so happy to be one of us!

Well, back to the North or South Pole.  Anyway, they mounted this expedition and went to a lot of trouble to find this mountain range that didn't exist.  Jon tells it a lot better.  I'm summarizing.  He compared that to how people are searching for God.  Those Hindus with all their false gods, many of them funny looking with three heads and multiple limbs are meant to manifest abstract qualities of an unknowable mysterious God.

Isn't it nice that Jehovah wants us to know him?  That's a good thing I think I will be thankful for today.  That the Hindu religion is wrong and we have a knowable God.

So, at the end of the talk, Jon wraps it all up by coming back to the Pole expedition and how they were chasing this mist, and the mountains didn't really exist.  Kind of like idols of Gods that do not have tongues so don't taste, don't have eyes so don't see, etc.

I'm pretty sure I've had a few students who worshiped a Steeler football player, a Penguin hockey player, or a rock star.  Some of the girls around here worship purses and no, I'm not kidding.  I guess I'd pick a purse over Justin Bieber though.

I got a new black Chinese Laundry purse for winter.  It's neat, but my life is never going to revolve around a bag.  Feel free to send me Prada and I'll prove it!

Twenty-One

Twenty-one years ago today, I tied my tubes.  I also gave birth via cesarean section to my baby girl, Kimberly.  Thankfully, we are not sidetracked with all the pagan business of celebrating the occasion, so other than noting the significance of the year, that she may now buy alcohol, it has been just another day.  Especially, gratefully, because she doesn't care for alcohol.  I'm so happy that my children really embrace this part of our way of life.  Living in Catholicsville, we've seen a whole new side to celebrating holidays that simply does not occur on this level in the South, and we are so tired just watching those people decorate their yards, light up their trees, and shove their way through WalMart.

And I can't tell you how many yard sales we've been to that were 80% old holiday decorations, right next to the crosses, right next to the Ouija boards and the books on the paranormal.

Today we had our garage sale.  Stayed up till 2:00 a.m. pricing and got up at 7:30 - looked out the window and people were lined up in the street.  Raised the garage door a few minutes later and people were ducking under before it was all the way up.  Still have one big dining room table and a small vanity, but that is about all that is left aside from maybe 2 bushels odds and ends.

We made $100 over my goal, so it's a good day.  I got ripped off twice (that I know of).  A woman put two necklaces in one baggie and left the empty baggie on the table.  I just figured if she needed a free $1.00 necklace that bad that I was going to let her take it.  Then, we have a laptop table, the kind that you use in bed, looks like a tray to have breakfast in bed, has a small lamp on the side.  So we have the receipt and original packaging showing it was $55.00.  We have it marked for $10.00.  So it's getting late and a woman offers us $5.00.  I said well, okay.  Then she says is the light broken, and I said no, it needs a battery.  She says then I can only give you $3.50 since I need to buy a battery.

It made Carly mad.  This woman was driving a very nice car.  I wasn't real happy, but I just looked at her and said well, sure then.  I guess she feels good about it, is probably blogging away to her friends about the buy she got on it right this very minute.

Carly says how can you not turn red and be mad over such exploitation?  I said it's a 2 Timothy 3:1-5 moment.  It's a sign of the times when people act that way, and I know we're getting close to a physical paradise to match the spiritual paradise we already enjoy.

And that woman has nothing but a laptop tray.  Really, I can afford to be generous.

So, here's to my tubes that have been ligated and by now have rusted with age.  May Jehovah give me a red headed baby boy in the new world.  Someone once told me there would be no freckles in the new world.  I guess we'll see.  I will have to have a husband first, and that's kind of sad.  This morning I sold the shirt I was wearing the day I met Abel.  I was never going to wear it again.  One day the week after I met him, I was thinking about him in TJ Maxx and I ran into his sister-in-law and she was nice as all get out to me.  I had just moved to a house in Windber and I had a bare spot on the wall of my green kitchen and I bought a plaque that said:  When I count my blessings, I count you twice.  I really did buy that thing thinking about a husband being a double blessing, both a friend and a lover.

I got $1.00 for the plaque.  I hope the woman who bought it ain't thinking about a man and breaking her own heart.  Carly said how about putting your CD's in the garage sale.

Nah, I told her.  It's only the things I did/bought/wore/made thinking about him that are infected.  The stuff he did for me, what there is of it, is okay.

If you did the math, you know I didn't sleep much, so I'm going to go to bed right now and get up early and study my WT.  I have one week until school starts, but I've gotten a lot done.  Sorry to have missed you yesterday in the interests of commerce.  Sometimes, life just intrudes.  But I missed my sisters.  I love my two baby girls too, so if you pray for me sometimes back as I do for you, pray for those girls to be not only my daughters, but also to fully become both my sisters, and yours.  I pray this for your children always.

Jamaican Bacon

Tonight, Kimberly asks me and Carly to both say "beer can" with a British accent.  I would not do it in front of anyone else, but I did it with the girls.  So did Carly.

Kimberly says, "Congratulations.  You have just said 'bacon' in Jamaican."

I have no idea where she picks this stuff up.

My ear is about to explode and my moon just turned up full while I was wearing white shorts today.  I'm tired and turning in.  Tomorrow is another day, Scarlett.  Why does her name have to be a shade of red?

Catharsis

Crying is supposed to be cathartic.  I have never been able to decide if it is or not.  Sometimes I think it is simply that after you have a big heaving cry, the kind that makes your face feel like a hot waxy candle about to drip into your chest, that when you finally get over it, you've just emptied yourself out, nothing left, and you feel relieved just by virtue of the fact that you are slack.

I hardly ever have a crying jag, but I did tonight.  I don't understand how I got there either because the day was going pretty well.  I got nine good hours of sleep (coming on top of a night of four, so I really needed it.)  I got the ad placed in the local paper ($35!) for Saturday, and picked up Lana and her brother TJ for a day of fun.  We went to the mall and Walmart, Sheetz and McDonalds, rented Yogi Bear at Redbox, and had a pretty good day going.  They're good kids.  I admit I felt old though.  I saw Sister Rickabaugh from East Hills at Giant Eagle while we were renting the film, and she asked me if I had my grandchildren with me.

Dang.

They are 7 and 8 and I am 49 so it is not only mathematically possible, but actually feasible.  And there is that red hair thing going on.

However, I am pretty sure I may never be a real grandmother because that would mean my daughters could get along with a husband, and they don't get along too well with each other or me.  I don't know.  Aren't we too old for growing pains?  I do have to say Kim was the sane one tonight, and part of me was proud of her voice of reason.  Baby is growing up.

I said "furniture" in the ad - and didn't specify the other child's big counter-height dinette table which she really wants to sell.  No one else googled the ad page and composed the ad and, might I reiterate, offered to pay the ad listing fee, other than me.  Doesn't that give me the privilege of writing the ad copy?  And if she doesn't like it, isn't she entitled to write, list, and pay for her own ad?  I don't want to sound harsh, but if no one takes responsibility for something besides me, it would seem that no one is entitled to criticize the management.

That led to a laundry list of all my sins and shortcomings as a mother.  It's a long list, and I admit, I sure have messed up a lot.  That led to me coming upstairs, heaving on the landing trying to breathe, and that whole "my face is melting off" sensation.

I'm tired of taking care of them both.  I know that sounds selfish, irresponsible, uncaring, harsh, you name it.  But I'm imperfect, and coming to Pennsylvania was a decision I made without having anyway to foresee the problems associated with the move.  I would not be here had I known and hindsight is always 20/20.  I am tired of being the only one who can unplug a toilet and put tissue on the spindle and unload a dishwasher.  I am tired of driving to Pittsburgh anytime someone wants to go to Ikea and I am out $40 for gas without a thank you.  Then they tell me I was happier spending my time with Lana and TJ than with them.  I answer by saying Lana and TJ were nicer to me.

Sadly, that is true.  I have asked and begged and pleaded for some kindness around here, and it is in short supply.  I am empty, and I cannot give them anything more from my reservoir.  I am tired.  I wish someone would just scratch my back once in a while, or smile at me, or care about how I feel.  I know when I finally break down (and it happens very seldom.  This is the second time in Pennsylvania) and cry that it sounds like a freight train.  They had to have heard how hard I was crying.  No one comforted me or asked me after if I was okay or, perish the thought, apologized for not liking my ad copy.  Like moi cannot write ad copy.

So tonight when I pray and thank Jehovah for something, it will be for first crying and then blogging all that out.  It will be for Lana kissing her brother's cheek in the fourth picture of their photo booth session in the mall and for TJ, for jumping in my lap when the dog barked at him and wrapping his hands around my neck, confident that I can take care of his problem.  And it will be for the confidence I have in Jehovah to strengthen me tomorrow to make it another day.

Goodnight Sisters.

Music

Well, to get back on track.  There are two new vocal collections provided by our faithful & discreet slave for download.  I was thinking they would arrive in September, but Sister Scully brought it to my attention they are there now.

I listened to three of them, The Victory Song, The Prayer of God's Servant, and Please Hear My Prayer.

Oh, Steve who?  This is beautiful.  This is worth living for!

Fly Like an Eagle

We went to Greensburg today.  There is a buyback place for DVD's and we went to Target and Sonic of course.  Then rushed up to Pitt to Ikea.  I love Ikea.  Of course, it makes me mad because when we move away, the odds of being close to Ikea are slim, and I'm going to be happy to have Target and Sonic right where I live instead of an hour away, but at the expense of Ikea?  I think I'll just move to Greensburg.  Too bad I didn't get a job at UPG instead of UPJ.

So on the way, I pop another Abel CD into the stereo.  I have hardly been in my office where the few other CD's I own are stored, so until next week, that is what is available.  This morning it was the Steve Miller Band.  Maybe he was right and we didn't belong together.  I asked about a few other bands I really loved (classic rock for $200 Alex) and he didn't have them.  I would like some Hall & Oates, Alan Parsons Project, and the Cure.  Kimberly says she hates the song Fly Like an Eagle.

I don't faint because I am driving.  But I wonder how she is my kid.  Or even her father's daughter, because he too loves this song and in fact, he was jealous that I also had the Lynyrd Skynrd CD which he wanted.  Maybe I'm attracted to men who like Sweet Home Alabama, but I seriously doubt Abel has ever been there.  Neither has my ex, but he was born on an army base in Germany and has lived just about every where else in the U.S.  He ought to come into the truth where he will have good enough friends to burn CD's for him.  Not only do we have truth, but we also have each other.

I asked her if she even knew what the song meant.  She said it's probably some hippie junk like John Denver singing about rocky mountain high as in high as a kite on drugs.  "Come on, Mom," she says.  "Fly, seriously!"

Here are the lyrics to the most meaningful verse and chorus:

Feed the babies

Who don't have enough to eat

Shoe the children

With no shoes on their feet

House the people

Livin' in the street

Oh, oh, there's a solution

I want to fly like an eagle

To the sea

Fly like an eagle

Let my spirit carry me

I want to fly like an eagle

Till I'm free

Fly through the revolution

I asked her if she knew what the national symbol of the American government was and she said the flag.  I said no, that is the symbol of the United States, the union of the 13 original colonies (stripes) and the complete 50 states (stars) but what else, and she said the Buffalo nickel just to be talking.

The eagle!  I yelled.  The bald eagle.

Oh, she said back.

Steve Miller is actually singing a song of political protest.  Why do we live in a country where children are shoeless, people are homeless, and anyone goes hungry?

Because the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.

And I listened to this song again, and I wanted to sing to the whole world what the solution was, so simple but they won't see, that God's kingdom is the answer.

I'd like to knock on Steve Miller's door. 

Foreigner

The Complete Greatest Hits of Foreigner album has remained on Billboard's Top Ten bestsellers of all time since shortly after its debut.  It has all the songs of my teen-hood.  I listened to a lot of music, but Foreigner made my top ten list too.

I always felt like some kind of foreigner in my life.  Like I never really belonged anywhere, to anyone.  The truth is the only place I've ever been happy at all.  The only real place - the other places are in books and being in music.

I didn't leave the truth for a guy.  I left it for music.  Oh Satan, thou art filled with crafty acts!  I grew up in a podunk town and the only music I ever heard live was in the band hall at the school.  The first time two girls at work dragged me into a bar, I nearly fainted when the first few bars sounded from the stage.  They had been asking me to go out with them for a long time and I kept saying no.  But that night, there was a band playing and I had their albums.  I couldn't resist going to hear them.

Within six weeks, I was missing all kinds of meetings to spend my life in bars because I was singing and playing guitar with a country group called Wheat Straw.  I drifted to a rock band called Fever after that, and on my nights off I sang in a piano bar at a swanky hotel.  In the country band I covered songs by Crystal Gayle and Charley McClain  ~ Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue & Sleeping with the Radio On.  With the rock band, I covered a lot of Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac.  In the piano bar, it was the real good stuff.  Nat King Cole's That's All, Neil Sedaka's remake (the slow version) of Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.  Carole King, Helen Reddy, Carly Simon That's the Way I Always Heard It Should Be.

I could sit here all night entertaining myself with a list of songs running through my head but I already know them and you might not be interested.

We drove home from Altoona the other day and I finally got around to locating my CDs and loading them in the car to go with my new car stereo.  I have an iPod and most of my music is on that and my computer, thus no big cd collection.  Anyhow, I have four or five that Abel burned for me last year.  He did a great job.  He burned the label onto the cds themselves somehow, and I don't mean a label glued on, but the computer etched it on somehow.  I have Phil Collins, Lynyrd Skynrd, The Who, a few others, and finally, Foreigner.  When he gave them to me, they were all in green neoprene sleeves.

Green is my favorite color, in case you haven't figured that out by noticing my blog graphics.

So the songs were playing and it got to I want to know what love is.  I want you to show me, and I felt like sputtering, felt like being angry and being vile and saying what a jerk and I'm so much better off without a man.  And I may be better off.  Paul recommended it, but historians record that Paul was notoriously ugly and even the temple prostitutes wouldn't serve him in the old days when he was Saul.  I don't know if that is true or not, but the historical/secular record does say this.

I tried to figure out if there was something there and I blew it somehow.  And I remembered a time when we had just moved into our new house last year, and we were getting ready to go to Ocean City the following week, and Abel loaned us his Outer Banks beach gear to use.  There are just some things us land-locked prairie girls did not know about the world, but Abel clued us in and offered us the use of an umbrella and chairs that do not sink in sand.

The day he dropped the stuff off, the girls' father was here, in the recliner barefoot, having just finished a three-hour marathon session of doing things for us like reassembling furniture and rearranging stuff and hanging pictures and other manly things the girls needed doing.  I introduced Abel to David and it went okay.  I thought so.

But a few years ago in Arkansas. there was a brother who told my best friend he had been thinking about me that way but I was too involved with my ex for his tastes.  It's only fair to point out that both Abel and Jared had horrible divorces and nothing good to say about their exes.

I can say plenty of horrible things, but I have two babies with this man, and for my daughters' sake, I am not going to say anything bad about the man in public.  And even privately, I am selective in what I say to whom.  Suffice it to say that while there were marital issues obviously, I never once had any issues with this man as a father.  He would always put his last dime towards the girls, always ate the leftovers and saved the best portions for them.

I cannot say that about all the fathers I know, but I can say it about him.

Then again, I probably am just too fat for Abel's tastes and am over analyzing things again.  But here is what I thought about.  Once, Abel told me his ex was awful, and I said yes, she did you wrong, but still, she gave you two babies.  She took your 23 chromosomes not once, but twice, and gave you the fruit of her uterus, 18 months of her body.  And isn't it stupid to consider it nine months?  Like your body goes back to normal the next day or something?  Because it never goes back to before, and it is several months before it gets to a new normal even.  Especially if you breastfeed.

Abel loves his children.  I admire dedicated paternity in men, and he shares that quality with my ex.

That's what I decided on that drive home from Altoona, that Abel did show me one kind of love.  Because although nothing worked out between us, and I still think he didn't give his ex enough credit, enough acknowledgement, of her contribution to making his babies, and I would like to say he's a moron for not wanting moi, still, I have to say that he's a nice guy.  He burned some great music for me and put it in green sleeves.  Not wanting me does not make him a bad guy, does not cancel out the good things he did.  Still, the irony strikes me sadly that the best cd he gave me was by Foreigner, and most of my life that's what I feel like, even now, with him.

Paul should have tried bringing music to the temple. 

these dreams

I don't know if it is the ear hurting or what, but I woke up at 2:00 a.m. panicked from a nightmare that Carly was dying and her father and sister told me she could wait till morning and I was beside myself trying to get to her.  I was so shook up I went and woke her up and asked her if she was okay.  The dream was that vivid that I thought it might be happening.

I got back to sleep, probably two hours later, and at 5:00 a.m. woke up from a horrible nightmare that I was with a man with long hair and a beard, metallic BO, and I was trying to make him not leave me and I was begging and taking off my clothes trying to convince him.  That strikes me as kind of odd in the cold light of day, as if I was trying to get a guy to stay with me, getting nekkid at my age might not be incentive.  What ain't fat is wrinkled.  And it was a very vivid dream as well, and I will spare you the primitive details, but I was ashamed that I even dreamed of doing something like that.

By the time I got back to sleep, I must have been exhausted enough to sleep through the alarm and cut it off.  I missed the meeting.  Tomorrow, something for my ear.  I would so much have preferred to get my sleep and make the meeting.  I can't decide which dream is worse today.  I'm going to quit dwelling on them now, but really, those are the two worst scenarios I can possibly think of.  I can imagine all kinds of sin I might possibly get pulled into, but not hooking up with a smelly old hippie at the cost of displeasing Jehovah.  But to consider my child's life like that, oh man.

I can't think of anything I ate or any reason to have such unreasonable dreams.  Someday in the new world, I'd like for someone to explain exactly what dreams are for.  Maybe they will be pleasant or unremembered.  Maybe goofed up dreams are yet another symptom of imperfection.  Like another one was necessary.  So even in our sleep, we are sinners.

Celestial Phenomena

Tonight I was in the garage after it got good and dark and the moon was almost full.  I heard thunderclaps and came out to see the sky.  There is a celebration, of what I do not know, called Richland Community Days and it is observed very close to the UPJ campus.  They were shooting off fireworks and while it is possible they are celebrating something unapprovable, I don't know what it is, so Carly came out and we watched them till my feet were tired.  (Well, I've put in a very long day).

I haven't seen any in over 20 years.  Evidently, technology has improved gun powder somehow, because I sure didn't remember anything so beautiful.  They were bursting and twice they were red and shaped like a heart.  Then some of them were very narrow and looked like something on a sci fi show.  A couple looked like the supergate on the last season of Stargate, my favorite show.

I was so grateful for my eyes, especially tonight, as I am 99% sure I'm coming down with an ear canal infection, to the point that I am taking ibuprofen, and I am not one to take any medication unless or until I am gritting my teeth, and I have a very high pain tolerance.  I am going to tough it out till Monday morning, as it is not ER worthy, but I sure wish this had gotten my attention Friday instead of Saturday.

The lights were such beautiful colors though, and as there is nothing wrong with my eyes at that distance (ah, reading!  I have to have glasses to read) it was so pleasant.

I was thinking of the prophecies about celestial phenomena and a talk by Brother Gerrit Loesch of the Governing Body about the end of the system.  We are living in such exciting times.  I don't even try to imagine what Jehovah might do to reveal his power.

I try to keep my act together, because I also want to probably be concealed in the day of his anger and power.  Plus, it is like the apostles told Jesus when they said, "Lord, whom should we go away to?"

Nothing else makes any sense.  This is the only life with meaning.  I'm off to study my WT feeling optimistic about my ear not sending sharp shooting knives through my brain before I get to the doctor on Monday.  I really hate ear infections.  I was thinking about that watching the fireworks.  Was I burning my retina?  Because the lights were really bright.  And I thought well, we won't have this in the new world, and probably any celestial events on Jehovah's schedule would not damage the eye.  Then I thought well, with a perfect body, wouldn't you recover from any damage that was done?  Won't we still heal?

So today I am thankful for colored lights and my eyes.

Carlita

When Carly was a baby, I called her that sometimes.  She is 22 now and dragged me out of bed to go to garage sales.  She found a 50's album/record cabinet for $2.  Yes, it needs a new finish.  Yes, her sander works great.  Yes, it is made of solid wood.  Can't get anything that good these days.

And another cabinet for $12, also solid wood.  So this should keep her out of my hair.

When we got home, two sisters from our congregation were driving by our house.  One of them, Lesley, is looking for a new place to rent.  I sure would like to have a sister for a neighbor.  Sadly, our place is big and also full, no vacancies.  I would like one of my neighbors to get out of here now, haha.

It is very hard to find a place to live here that is updated or new. 

Still, it would be cool to be close to an elder and his wife. 

Lana is doing well and coming over Wednesday.  How's that for a recovery?  Great, I think.

That six hours sleep I got ran out a long time ago.  And worldly people at garage sales will knock you down to beat you to a good deal.  Whew.

Heroes

It's summer and I am out of school.  I suppose I need some downtime, but there is part of me that wants to stay in super mode and accomplish great things.  But I'm just trying for some calm.  Yesterday, I was reading a book.  There is no pleasure in the world quite like reading a book from start to finish with no interruptions.  Usually I have to stop and teach classes, cook dinner, sleep.  You know, life.  But yesterday I had a rather long book and the whole day in front of me.

Do you think I got to read without interruptions?  Think again.  The girls went on overdrive asking me questions.  And by about page 300 when they would say, "Mom!" instead of cheerfully saying what my baby, I was sighing, putting the book aside, and saying the dreaded what now?  I was saying it calmly; I'm all about the calm this week.  And it finally got through to them because a little later, I heard one say Mom and the other one say we're bothering her.  I said no, but I am feeling a little crowded today.

There are movie tickets on the side of the fridge, a mall up the road and a full tank of gas in my car.  Don't they need to go somewhere?

This year, for the first time since they were in high school, the schedule comes up that I will have two afternoons all alone all year long.  I am never alone in my own house.  I wish they had the money to go to Pittsburgh.  Maybe I'll give it to them!

They do sleep in even more/later than me.  I get up, I take all my vitamins and supplements and a few prescriptions, and I have breakfast with the crossword and the jumble and Dear Abby.  Sometimes if the puzzle is really easy I have time to read Dear Abby and that Dr. column (today it was hemorrhoids - a tough word to spell - so I was less interested than usual) and sometimes a little headlines or op ed.  The thing is the news is all bad, and solving word problems makes me feel smart, so that is how that works.

Today Dear Abby ran responses to a column she ran in June asking readers to nominate their heroes, excluding celebrities or family members.

I tried to think of a celebrity I considered heroic.  There wasn't one.  I tried to think of a family member.  All I could say was Carly.  She has had me for a mother for one thing, and she goes to school with a bunch of spoiled rich brats.  She has her head on straight and doesn't whine about any of that.  She can cook and clean and decorate and manage money better than I ever could at that age.

When Dana and I were sitting in the waiting room while Lana had her tonsils removed, we were talking about how hard it is to see your child suffer and be helpless to change their lives.  My mother maintains to this day that she was a great mother and did everything for us.  She cannot afford to admit to any mistakes.  She will relate in great depth all her good acts in caring for her mother, her brother, her husband, as they all aged and eventually died  And that's true.  My first thoughts about my mother are that she fought me from the get go over education.  Anytime I won any academic honor, she was quick to tell me there were plenty of people smarter than I was.  When I finished my last degree, she told me:  "Big deal.  So now you're a doctor.  You have never even owned a house and you don't have a pot to urinate in."

Thanks Mom.  You wonder why I don't call you more often.

So who are my heroes if I wrote Dear Abby?

The brothers and sisters who stayed faithful to Jehovah during the Holocaust.  That's a good start.  In the Bible record, my top votes would be Sarah, Hannah, and Abigail.

Sarah told Abraham to get it on with Hagar.  There was that Abrahamic covenant in place, by means of your seed ... a mighty nation.  At some point Sarah figured out that it was not a Sarahmaic covenant.  Might not be her seed, so she said here is Hagar.  How many sisters would put aside their personal claim on a husband and put Jehovah and Abraham's relationship first, as well as the future of what became the Israelite nation?

Later, Jehovah told Abraham to listen to his wife.  He didn't want to send Ishmael and Hagar away.  I wonder if Abraham, as a man, didn't like having two women at his beck and call.  And Sarah didn't strut around saying, "uh huh, you should have listened to me from the start but no, you were stubborn, so Jehovah had to correct you."  Serves you right Abe, always thinking you're the smartest one here.

So I like Sarah.  She's doing all that without the Insight books to refer to.  And I like Abigail and how she figured out right away that first husband was going to get them all killed so she went to David herself with provisions.

But I adore Hannah.  She wanted a baby.  That was so important for a woman especially then.  The nation needed lots of babies, like grains of sands or stars in heaven.  The Mosaic covenant was not about limiting women to a biological role.  It was about appreciating the gift of life Jehovah gave humans.  Angels don't get to make babies.  Well, some made those little nephilim, but you know what I mean.

And Elkanah has babies with Peninnah, and he loves Hannah, and he is prosperous and in a good relationship with the nation, with Jehovah, with life and Hannah is so upset she can't eat.  Now that part I don't quite get, but I've seen it happen.  He tells her life is good, but that's a man talking.  He is not there in the household when the snide remarks of Peninnah are going round.  So you know how that turned out, eventually Samuel was born and later, other babies.  But Jehovah was the one who understood Hannah even when her husband could not.  I love Hannah for trusting Jehovah to understand.  It's a lesson I have to remind myself of frequently.

Once, when I was on my way out of the truth, I was working at Walmart.  There was a sister working there close to my age named Dorothy.  I was in the process of meeting with the elders and being disfellowshipped.  Ah, my wayward stubborn youth.  I really like the comments Abel's father made about that process last Saturday at the Miami get together as we were discussing that paragraph in the WT study on David and Absalom, and how family members have to respect disfellowshipping as Jehovah's arrangement.  Abel's dad said that disfellowshipping is not the end of a process, but the beginning.  It is the first step to come back.  It is necessary for the person to see the scope of their sin.

That helped me find peace, more than I have ever had before, 30 years after the fact.  But at the time this was all going on in 1981, Dorothy had heard the announcement but knew nothing about the why.  At the store, she was telling everybody who would listen that I was being thrown out of our church for being so wicked, and she proceeded, based on the stories that made it back to me, to tell everyone about the drugs I was on, the number of boyfriends I had and their racial heritage, and every other vile thing she could imagine and that she was so much better than me.

So I told the brothers I understood why they were taking the action they took in my case, but I said could you please discuss this with Dorothy and ask her to not spread rumors at my place of employment, because it was disrupting work and my boss had talked to me about it and said if the problems continued, he would have to terminate my employment. 

The elders were in my living room, decorated on a budget and filled with two crushed velvet occasional rockers and two wicker chairs.  A stereo and a B&W 19" TV.  That's what I had.  I was in one wicker chair and all three brothers were substantial and looked uncomfortable in my small cheap furnishings.  The brother in the other wicker chair wanted to snow exactly what Dorothy was saying.  I couldn't bring myself to give the entire list because some of the things she said indicated that I was not only sleeping with men, but also women.  As if!  So I said a few things, and ended with the summary statement:  She's telling everybody she's so much better than me. 

Without blinking an eye or missing a beat, the elder replied adamantly, with spit flying, She is better than you.

I have to say, 30 years later, I wish I'd had Abel's dad in that room instead of that brother.  I started to say well, it is my understanding Jesus died for all of us and maybe I'm the prodigal daughter.  But instead I just said okay.  And I got fired.  I had no congregation and no job and no hope.


At the DC, I really liked one of the talks about the Prodigal Son.  You know why there is no prodigal daughter in the Biblical record is because women could not take money and go live alone or travel.  But I have always liked that account because in some ways I feel like a modern Prodigal Daughter.  The talk in Reading mentioned that the father never gave up hope that the son would return, and I was thinking that maybe, just maybe,all that time I was out in the world, Jehovah never gave up hope I was coming back.  And I don't give up hope my girls come in and come on strong for Jehovah.  Who has the authority to write anyone off?

Over a dozen years later I was at the hall with my two little girls when we had a visiting brother give the talk.  It was the Wicker Chair brother.  I went up to him after the meeting and thanked him for coming, but I won't complicate your opinion of me by lying about my motives.  I wanted to know if he remembered me.  I wanted to say Look at me with my two preciously beautiful little girls at Jehovah's house.  Did you hear all three of my comments during the WT?  Do you remember how you hurt me?  Do you see I am "better" now?

I was feeling vengeful because Dorothy was out of the truth and I was back.  If he recognized me, I could not tell.  He shook my hand and said he enjoyed visiting our congregation and that was all.  Later I told Sherry (McCasland, the helper Jehovah blessed me with) that he was the brother I had told her about.  I had spent years trying to heal from the pain of that remark.  I spent years thinking I was not good enough to be your sister.  I spent decades even after regaining a spiritual standing thinking I didn't quite rate with the rest of the membership.

The saddest thing to me is that if I had a Dear Abby column and got everyone to write me their heroes, if it was just a column for witnesses, I bet a lot of sisters would list male heroes, but none of the brothers would list female heroes.  I'm also fond of Deborah and Dorcas and Zipporah.  Esther.  Miriam.  And there is no irony here, as I could propose a long list of males I admire and study.  I'm wild for David writing all those songs, and Moses being meek and mild, and Peter, oh how I wish Peter would be resurrected to earth.

Brother Wicker died a few years later with cancer.  Sherry told me.  I wonder sometimes if he will have a perfect memory in the new world and recognize me then.  And it took a lot of years for me to forgive him.  I kept telling myself I had better figure this out if I expected Jehovah to forgive me of my sins.  But saying you need to forgive someone and really doing it, that's two different things.  Two of my friends have told me that sometimes reading my blog makes them sad.  They wish my life had been better.  I am not writing for sympathy.  I am writing so if you have been hurt too you will at least know that you are not alone.  That these things are being experienced in the whole association of brothers, and sisters.

Satan uses everything he can against us.  I am never tempted to smoke, but it is a problem for some.  I am never going to be counseled for alcohol or drugs or being a lesbian, but I have had a few problems wanting a husband.  I have been counseled so many times, beginning with my grandmother making me write the scripture about the tongue is a little member 100 times, about my mouth.  I'm not materialistic for china or diamonds, but I do like Barbie dolls and books.  Satan knows all my buttons to push.

And he used Brother Wicker to push a big one, and it nearly worked.  It did work for awhile.  But I got over it and it made me stronger.  I have probably said something at some point, and I would consider myself blessed if it was only one thing, to someone that hurt them for decades.  Something I may not even remember saying.  Satan might be exploiting my tongue if he can.  What doesn't kill you makes you stronger my sisters.  Satan wants to kill us.  I am grateful I finally got over that remark.  I want to live, forever, with all of you.

Reversible Quilt

The quilt on my bed is reversible.  One side is white with blue and green "eywa" blossoms on it.  The print looks like dandelions or jellyfish floating.  Like in the film Avatar.  The other side is a pastel teal with wide green, tan, and white stripes.  I changed linens today and put the stripe side up instead of the eywa side.  I guess Eywa should be capitalized as a proper noun in the movie.

I thought I preferred that side to stripes, but now I am just as happy with the stripes.  I like the way everything came together on a cheap budget.  I like being able to get two looks in one purchase.

My mother has a $500 bed spread.  Once she told me that, I didn't ask what the pillows cost or the drapes.  I sent her a picture of the girls at the DC about two weeks ago.  I had not spoken to her in 14 months.  I called her before sending the picture and her house phone was disconnected.  That surprised me to the point that I checked the online obituaries in her local newspaper.  She wasn't there.  I haven't heard from her.  I am okay with that.  Two days ago, Dear Abby advised someone to divorce his parents.

I am okay with that idea too.  I know, we are both sisters also.  I did my soul searching about "as far as it is possible, be peaceable with all men."  For years I did everything she wanted trying to please her and it never worked.  She made me quit school my senior year - me, the girl who lived for school.  I think sometimes that is how I ended up in college for so long when I finally returned to school.  I didn't plan it that way, but I never minded it either.  My brother graduated with a C average and our parents threw his entire graduating class of over 100 kids a BBQ party with Texas chocolate sheet cake for dessert, and about 50 pounds of my mother's potato salad.  They bought him an F150 Ford Lariat pick up, brand new.

I graduate with my Bachelor's degree cumma sum laude and got $50 and she took me and the girls to Golden Corral for a buffet.

And I'm wondering why she didn't call me when I sent her the picture of the girls.  You know that saying:  Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  Two words I would say to her if she did call:  Towel Thrown.  I give up.

I am going to blog tomorrow earlier in the day.  At night I am tired and cranky and self-pitying.  I used to email Abel every day at this time.  I worry sometimes this is my substitute for that.  Back then, he always answered me, but it's been several months since he's shown up in my inbox.  Of course, I am rarely in his these days too.  When we reached our impasse, he just wanted everything to continue between us the way it was before, only for me not to hope it became something more.

I can't cook and write and invest that much energy, time, and pie in a brother with whom I am not entertaining something more.  It made me feel used.  I'm not good enough to marry, but please let me keep coming to your house for movies and dinner and good times.  I don't know any other sisters and brothers with that kind of friendship and even if it was appropriate, I simply am not willing.  Suppose I found another brother.  How would he feel about that much friendship between us?  I have my boundaries, and I have to abide by them.  I am saving lots of me for a husband, and I'm not going to distribute those parts to anyone lesser.

See, I'm all maudlin and tired.  I will shoot for the afternoon tomorrow.  Good night.