Two Different Fathers

I have been living with the changes inside my mind about changes in my life this week.  I have paced a bit and worried, of course, and come back around to feeling the freedom beneath my tennies bouncing back up at me.  The cycle of letting go, grieving with sadness, denial or blame and then calm.  Trusting the process isn't one of my strong points and I can get there.

I am running more, reading more, drinking more tea, discerning stress tucked in job announcements and just trying to use the magnifier that comes with hard knocks.  I am open to new ideas and a few have come to visit.  Today as I was looking for work on the Internet I turned my head to look out the window and an Acorn woodpecker was walking up the trunk of the Maple outside my window.  Just then, a gift.

I listened to an NPR program that was so riveting that I had to sit in the car to finish it.  Fresh Air had an interview with Frank Calabrese Jr. about his book Operation Family Secrets.  I listened to the choices that Frank Jr. made about the life he was drawn into by his mobster father and wondered where that kind of courage comes from inside.  A frightening almost surreal account of murder and revenge is enough to make us wonder what kind of father would jeopardize a son.  Yet Frank Jr.'s father enjoyed killing people and using his sons to achieve those end results were part of the plan.

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/02/147725615/frank-calabrese-jr-on-opening-his-family-secrets

The second part of my afternoon was spent with a man who took us for a hike on Taylor Mtn. nearby on a very sunny and warm afternoon here.  He is a man who hikes there often and showed us ways to hike across the emerald green hillsides above the Santa Rosa plain.  I found out as we hiked that our friend was raised by Mormon parents though he is a very loving and compassionate Quaker now in life.

He told us the story of his own father who helped him to find his way after High School.  His father told our friend that "his job was to get an education" and not to go off on a Morman mission as most young men of their faith do. This strategic choice for our friend changed his life dramatically.  Loving, real and courageous, our friend moved on to psychiatry and a different faith altogether.  Many times, our friend has offered me words of support and he continues to offer just that to the co-workers whom I left behind now feeling under seige from what I call "The Unholy Trinity."

I am stunned by the character of both sons in these two stories as being so similar and yet with very different fathers. Where does that depth of character come from and how does it steer us toward certain choices?  I was left with more questions than answers today and that is just fine with me. 

Asking the question doesn't neccessarily beg the answer these days and I am fortunate to see the magic in the space in-between.

Walking The Way We Talk

I have little to say lately that I am sure of and that, for a writer, might just be writer's block.  Today though is a bright, blue, cold morning in Northern California that holds the promise of a Sunday adventure in the Mini and that always opens up the horizon in front of me. 

Last night we had dinner with some former co-workers and residents from the wonderful campus where I worked for five months as a gardener.  I miss them so much.  I miss my place there and the beauty and their stories.  Such kind, real and strong older folks.  My role models to be sure. I came home light and full of contentment which has been challenging lately as I find some distance from the difficulties of the near past. Especially distance from Mr. Big I and II, a strange shaming interraction with a Chiropractor and a Grocery Store manager. 

 I am doing well, considering where I have been, finding new volunteer opportunities, finishing up an online class that I have been taking and doing some home projects.  I am getting bored though.  Boredom is a sticky wicket for me as the "shame machine" starts to cough and sputter. That piece of machinery can be the source of pain if I let the gears begin to whine at a high rate of speed.  My mind will sort out the most negative messages from the "shame machine" and twist the past into some kind of blame game that is far from the truth.  Other people will try to do that with us and we don't need to shovel the coal that fuels that monster.

There is different way.

 "...If I feel ashamed, I need a reality check because my thinking is probably distorted. Even though it may take great courage, if I share about it with a (friend), I will interrupt the self-destructive thoughts and make room for a more loving and nurturing point of view.  With a little help, I may discover that even my most embarrassing moments can bless my life by teaching me to turn in a more positive direction..." -Courage To Change, One Day At A Time In Al-Anon II

This is not an easy project and yet it can be the most loving way to create nueropathways that open up into bright, sunlit mornings on our lifetime of challenges.  This is my journey and I want to be a part of the solution for myself instead of part of the source of darkness.  That is a tune I can whistle all day long.

"Live And See What Happens"

Life is often a big mystery to me and yet I try so hard to know myself better and better in time.  I do not always understand my reactions nor give them the attention that they deserve.  With that, I can say that I have chosen and was reminded of a famous saying that Kay Flynn often claimed.

Kay Flynn was a co-worker nurse friend of my mother's and she came to stay in one of our "guest" rooms for a time.  Flynn had a very healthy drinking problem and yet she often had such right on comments about life like "Live And See What Happens." Maybe she just knew or maybe she had lived through many hard times and allowed for the hardships and the joy to ebb and flow along with her favorite alcoholic beverage.  Just the same, her saying today is spot on as they say and it may just become the moniker of my second half of 2012.

Live and see what happens.

Who Put The 'Ape' In Apricot?

I have been cleaning out the garage and throwing away junk as I recover from my cold and have a few days off before I start yet another new job.  Maybe this is the way life is going to be?  Maybe it will get weirder and weirder as the years move along.  It has been warm enough this week to feel like spring though it can hardly be that mid February here.  There has been just enough quiet to feel afraid and then talk myself out of it.  There has been just enough relief to miss my family in Texas and wish I could live next door and come by for coffee.

Some of us are still a little P.T.S.D. from our childhood's and we do the best we can with the adult package that must make decisions, consider consequences, say yes and say no and move on to what is next.  Some of the people that I know carry quite a bit of "core wounding" as therapists like to call it.  Some of us can feel it come up in our bodies before we realize what it is that is jerking our chain.  I am still, a work in progress.

I am fortunate and very much so, to know that I have much love to give and sometimes it doesn't get through those filters.  I do what I can and sometimes there is just way too much to take in and too much to consider that could become a regret if I do not pause and consider the outcome.  I believe that one has fear and faith in tandem or rather, I do.  I believe in myself and I am cautious. 

I started thinking about that cowardly lion again and how his sweetness was transparent and his fear palpable.  His quaking is humorous and I know how that can be as I begin another adventure in employment.  I do wonder about courage and where does that come from?  I wonder about the space between niggling fears and the commencement of courage and conviction.  It is just a pause, a hesitation, a space on the page or a gaze towards the horizon before one turns, breathes in and saunters into the next frame.  That is the 'ape' in apricot.

"Who Is The Slayer, Who Is The Victim, Speak."

I was amazed at the hustle and bustle of a Monday in our not-so-wee city today as I tried to accomplish some errands with the dying embers of my second cold in four months.  Drivers were not nice and one woman tailgating me off the freeway was yelling at me for being in front of her.  Or so I guessed.  I saw so much ugliness out there that I could not wait to come home and watch a movie with the dogs slumbering nearby.

Having a cold has its own cadence and today I felt better than I have in a week. However, the anger of people driving and customers in stores where I went, treating one another with a callousness that might otherwise seem standard was enough for me to think I needed a helmet to be out amongst them.   Thankfully I could just come home.

For me, at this juncture in life, I try to breathe in the difficulty of loss and pain and breathe out love, compassion and a greater understanding how we could try much harder with one another.  I remembered a quote my mother had cut out from a wonderful book of photography called The Family Of Man which asked, "Who Is The Slayer, Who Is The Victim, Speak?"

In less poetic language, we are all family and kindness toward our fellow travelers may be all that separates our life experiences.

The Full Moon Cloaked By Rain Clouds

What a strange week of endings and the endless midlands of job interviews and people with power.  Choices come across our thresholds in life, sometimes cloaked by rain clouds and sometimes as clear as a frosty night in February.  Neither has been true this week.

I made my decision to leave my chaotic job replete with vengeful overlord co-workers who cannot seem to prevent themselves from being just plain stupid.  I tried.  I four months of it tried.  Triple digit heat, piles of weeds, branches, compost and mulch, rotting fruit and days of sweeping, raking, grabbing, pulling, hoisting and chucking just about everything related to the earth.  I have sweated and been frozen in 26 degree frost.  I have been drenched by rain by 9 AM and had wet and cold boots on all day.  I have been tried, accused and harassed. And I am done.

I have had four interviews in the last ten days or so, all different except I was there.  My calm has come to rest here with me, knowing all too often how people in power will chose someone else for some inane reason.  They like their hair?  I have learned not to get too excited about the prospects though one must be fueled by some kind of energy.  A small hope.

My interview today took all of 12 minutes as I checked my watch walking out the front doors.  I had mixed feelings about the tasks involved though admiring of the company.  Things just seem way too hard and I attempt to see the message inside it.  The answer still evades me.  I walk ahead, I stop, I continue on in the light even if the full moon is cloaked by rain clouds. I'm still here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkjQSpfW3iw

A Multi-Cultural Farce

What a strange day this was and so glad that someone thought up the idea of  Friday.  T.G.I.F. indeed. I am now home after sharing a big old pizza with a friend who knows me well.  There is nothing like friendship to cure the ills of a weird year thus far, weird week, weird day. I am so glad someone thought up friends and pizza.

The multi-cultural farce of this day started with a very strange after lunch meeting in the crowded shop where we store our stuff and where lots of other stuff sits around or ends up on the floor until they clean it up.  Strange way to do business.  We are all sitting and standing around when my co-worker accuses me of telling one of the residents that he is lazy.  He further accused me of saying to this resident how hard I work in comparison to my co-workers and not to tell anyone or I will get in trouble.

It gets stranger.

First of all, I am not a snitch nor am I stupid or lacking in common decency enough to talk up the shortcomings of my co-workers, of which there are plenty, to a resident of our not-so-fine establishment.  In fact, I was sideswiped by his accusations.  Mr. Big I appeared quite sure I did just that though he would not say who the perpetrator in question was.  Mr. Big II started to chime in on my inability to sweep perfectly to which I got really freaking mad.

It gets stranger.

I defended myself to this very strange accusation on this strange day and we all parted after more posturing by my not-so-fine co-workers for some more weeding, imperfect sweeping and generally get me to quitting time thoughts.  It came and went and I must say it felt odd, annoying, dark and definitely filled with resentment in the air about having a tiny woman out-work you every single day. 

It gets stranger.

I find out when I get home another co-worker, a man, had a loud conversation with a resident where he said that Mr. Big I is lazy and his sister, also an employee, heard this and reported it to her brother.  Her brother-Mr. Big I, then decides that the person impugning his character is me and the snow ball comes down the hill full blast. Somewhere between someone else saying what everyone thinks without my saying so and my accuser is the multi-cultural farce where I work.

Non-native English speakers fill in the gaps just like native English speakers and something is still lost in the translation.  One thing is for sure however, I am working in the wrong job, wrong time, wrong place.  Hurt, anger and accusations sent me on my way home yet I know that I prefer comedy to drama.

Enough is enough.