Moncho

When I think of Moncho I think of all the wrongs I should have righted before they became wrongs.  It's like I stepped in a puddle I saw coming and owned the water in my shoe and laughed about it like it's what I wanted in the first place.  And then came the regret.  And then the confusion.  And then the anger.  First at myself.  And then at Moncho.
Moncho is the temptation and the curse, the decision and the knowledge, the hope and despair.  And if you don't have a Moncho, you did.  Or you will.  Everyone has a Moncho at some point, even if he doesn't show up on your doorstep or look you square in your self-conscious face in the middle of the night when you turned around and least expected him but saw him anyway even though you never thought you would.
And Moncho knows exactly what he's doing.  He's a goalie, a score keeper, an ice-skater, and hunter, and he will run his bowie knife right through the guts of your perfectly salted plan.  And he will leave you alone to think about the mistakes you made.  Because you made them, not him.  He just happened to get in the way.  Moncho is always in the way.  Literally.  And then he's all you can think about until you want to puke because you're still a little sick about it and wounded, too.  Moncho is the one you thought you could trust out of everyone.  But Moncho is a trick, a monolithic, illusory, sparkly new thing that turns out to be that which you should've left alone.  But you let him in, and now he's your secret, and you wear him like cheap perfume, like smudged lipstick, like a life jacket, because he knows, too, what can tempt you.  He took a big risk because he was the one with nothing to lose, so what did it matter to him if he couldn't make you break your diet or your promise or you knuckles on the table of regret.  He's no longer innocent, but he's not guilty either. 
And he doesn't even have the sense to consider the ramifications of Moncho.  Moncho is mindless.  Now put Moncho out of your mind.

My Grandfather Makes Me Cry

My Grandfather Makes Me Cry

1.       He’s 94 years old.

2.       He married my grandmother when he was 26.  She was six years his senior, and had five children by her first husband.

3.       He became my and my brother’s legal guardian, with my grandmother, during a tumultuous and frightening time in our childhood.

4.       He opened savings accounts for us and made us invest 10% of our weekly allowance report card earnings, and he matched that 10%, to teach us the power of compound interest.

5.       He keeps my grandmother’s ashes by his bed and talks to her twice a day.

6.       He has survived 4 of his 5 children, and he supported my grandmother emotionally and financially for 64 years, through family illnesses, death, and strife.

7.       About a year ago, he fell and fractured his hip and back.  I expressed my anger about the fact that the nurses couldn’t keep his medication straight, and I was ready to give them a piece of my mind.  But he stopped me and said, “They’re fine.  I don’t want to make waves.  This is nothing, and I might really need them someday.”

8.       About four years ago, he made a new lady friend, who recently passed away.  He loved her easily and completely.  When someone mentions her, he says, “She was quite a lady,” and he knows this takes nothing away from the love he had for my grandmother, who he admits “was the best partner in life [he] could have asked for.”

9.       In response to any hardship, he simply says, “You play the hand you’re dealt; that’s all.”

10.   He suffers from macular degeneration and is nearly completely blind, registering only shapes and shadows. 

11.   He never gets bored.  He has about 500 songs on an MP3 player.  He just kicks back with his headphones plugged into his ears, his hearing aid turned up, enjoying the sounds of everything country including Willie Nelson, George Strait, and Taylor Swift.  Also, he has a machine from the Braille Institute that plays books on tape.  He can adjust the speed and tone of voice of the reader to suit his preference and mood.  When his sight was better, he worked as a volunteer repairing these machines.

12.   When I arrived to visit once, he looked at me and furrowed his brow.
               "What's that on your head?" he asked.  "You wearing a hat?"

 I replied first with a small, quiet laugh.  “It’s my hair.  Up in a bun!” 

 He dismissed this information with a shake of his head.

 I wondered if his dismay stemmed from his misperception or from the fact that I thought wearing my hair up on my head like a hat was a good idea.

13.   The most recent time I visited my grandfather, he shared his concern over having lost a significant amount of weight.  He didn’t look smaller than before, but I asked how much he’d lost. 

“I’m down to 143,” he said with a frown.  “I’m not going to be around much longer if I keep losing weight like this.  Last weigh in was 162.  And I just don’t have an appetite.  I’m forcing myself to eat, though.”

“Well, that’s not good.  I wonder why you’re losing so much so fast.”

“I don’t know.  Hope the doctor can give me some answers.  Otherwise, I’m a goner.”

We proceeded to eat our dinner.  He cleaned his plate: Chicken Parmesan, red potatoes, and peas and carrots.  He’d also eaten a cup of yellow split pea soup as an appetizer, and a glass of Salmon Creek chardonnay.  For dessert, he ordered a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  

"I'm trying to eat," he said. 

When we returned to his apartment, I asked him if he wanted me to check his scale. 

“Sure, why don’t you,” he said.  “What I have to do to check my weight is stand on it and then bend over and move one of the little colored plastic markers over to where the needle goes.  And then, I pick up the scale and take it over to my reader [a special magnifying machine for the blind] so I can see where the marker is.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very accurate way to weigh yourself,” I laughed.

“Well, it’s pretty good.  It’s the best I got.”

I went into his bathroom and weighed myself.  I was secretly hoping it might show that I, too, had dropped twenty pounds since my last weigh in.  The scale was set about a pound on the light side, but my weight was accurate. 

“It seems to be right,” I called to him.  “You wanna get on this thing and have me read it for you?”

“We might as well,” he said.  He pushed his walker into the bathroom and abandoned it to step onto the scale.

“Grandpa,” I said.  “It says you weigh 162.”  I checked the needle again.

“Well how ‘bout that,” he said.

“Good to know you aren’t wasting away after all.”

“Sure is.”

I moved the blue marker that had been previously set to 143.  “Now you know where you are,” I said.

Later that evening, I had a phone conversation with my brother about the faulty weigh-in situation, and we discussed the benefits of a talking scale.

“I can see it now,” I said, “Get off me, fatty!  Ow, you’re hurting me!  Lay off the sweets, will ya, Sweets?”

My brother laughed.  “It’ll read him the weight so he doesn’t have to go through so much trouble.”

“Yeah, we certainly can’t trust a blind man to read the scale right.”

My grandfather’s birthday is in October, and while he certainly would get a kick out of a scale that told him he needed to cut back on the biscuits, he can really use one that tells him he’s not wasting away.

14.    When I tell my grandfather we sure got lucky to have him in our family, he pats me on the hand and says, “I sure am the lucky one, and I love you so, so much.”

And that’s how he makes me cry.

No Certain Analysis

In keeping with the natural order of things and the fact that change is inevitable, I've updated my blog page.  I've neglected my blog for quite some time now.  There was a small part of me that hoped it would sustain itself and that, somehow, it could know me and write for me all the longings and lessons of my heart.  But that is the dreamer in me--the part of me that has remained too small in the face of truth.  Logic tells me that dreams and magic are two very different things.  But isn't there a sort of magic in all dreams?

A friend of mine was talking about miracles the other day.  Not the kind of miracles granted by God, but the kind of miracles we see in life every day, the kind of miracles we see in hope, love, and change.

The more she spoke about the benefits of changing one's attitude and perspective, the more I began to see myself in her--not the self I've been, but the self I wish to be.  Yet I couldn't help but wonder why, if this change is what I really want, it is so difficult to achieve.  My friend's philosophy stems from the idea that the only person you can change is yourself; it is not our job to change other people.  How true this is!  Yet we (I) pretend that this is not so.

Honesty is such a vast thing.  And so small, too, so easily hidden.  When I am honest with myself I am able to grant myself a place in this world much more meaningful than the space I fill by merely existing.  Being honest means giving your voice to the unforgiving wind that seeks to destroy your expression.  Being honest means loving yourself enough to know what you want, think, believe, and need and then having the courage and confidence to speak those things. 

I will admit, there is a part of me that's floating away, and I'm not sure where that fierce wind is trying to take me.  The question now is, does my voice sing with that wind or fight against it?

I'm dreaming more these days. I welcome the judges. They have always been here; now, I'm not pretending they don't exist.

Many of you who read this will wonder what I'm talking about and why I'm being so vague.  It must seem like I'm trying to tell you something while I'm not really telling you anything at all.  This post seems to be about so many things and about nothing specific at the same time.  Well, there we go, floating away.  It happens when we least expect it, and rarely do we see it coming. 

Your heart has answers, and if you will just close your eyes and listen, you might hear them.

Influenced by the Past

When I was eleven, Tina Turner’s voice rasped about what love had to do with it.  I wondered.  She never actually said, and I did expect her to blurt out the truth, if only for my benefit.  And Sheila E. taught me about the glamorous life and I didn’t figure out until much later when analyzing lyrics what problem “she” knew she had by the seventh week.  But I sang the words like I knew about that glamorous life and as if a glamorous life was literally being spelled out for me by my music idols.  Ignorant bliss, this was my joy.  And in this ignorance, I became a product of the eighties.  It would have happened anyway, but clinging to music made me begin to see who I was.  I was in a foster home, poor, skinny, scraggly, and awkward.  I thought I could invent myself by donning the styles of the time—anything I could get my hands on.  But I didn’t know what I was doing, and I never really knew how to put all the pieces of myself together. 

There is a picture that was taken of me while visiting my grandparents for a weekend wearing my best outfit—a thin yellow cotton dress replete with two layers of ruffle in the skirt and a thick sash tied in a bow around my waist.  I wore a neon pink lace bow in my hair—Madonna style, and I wore tan faux leather slip-on flats on my feet.  To top it all off, I had pinned a tiny fuzzy little bear to the spot above one of my non-existent breasts.  That bear was more stylish in his nakedness with only a little red bowtie at his neck than I could ever be with no money, no true fashion sense, and nobody to care either way.  To think I thought I looked stylish and cool!  I was seriously trying too hard and failing miserably in my skinny, white, pre-pubescent body.  What I needed was a fashion consultant, someone who was even remotely tuned in, someone to show me the appropriate risk to take in developing my own personal style while teaching me how to rein it all in a bit.  I wanted to be fashionable, put together, pretty.  What I had instead was a pseudo self, a patchwork quilt of odds and ends all thrown together in a wild attempt at… something.  I desperately wanted to fit in, and my attempts to improve the outside only revealed just how awkward and alone I was.  On the inside I was angry and sweet, fire and ice, precocious and smart.  But on the outside, I was dull, pale, and sad.  Why was it so hard to reconcile how I felt with how I looked? I was wasting away, vanishing behind a mask of freckles, unwashed hair, and a forced smile for the sake of the camera in my grandfather’s hands.

My husband and I have been talking about the dreaded budget.  The long story short is that I need to curb spending.  And what is it I spend my—I mean our—money on, you ask?  Clothes and shoes and fuzzy bear pins—or whatever the trendy accessory of the moment may be.  Sure, we have enough to eat and we take wonderfully dreamy vacations.  We have more than enough money to live and save for the future as well as a few rainy days here and there.  But because of me, we didn’t make our budget last year.  We had a major change in income, what with me quitting my teaching job, so I knew we—I—would have to make some changes in my habits.  I had to admit to my husband that I just really don’t pay that much attention when I buy things, and “we’re not bankrupt or anything!”

What I have to face is the truth about how the emptiness of my childhood helped create an emptiness inside of me that did not vanish when I finally grew breasts.  How easy everything would be if the sadnesses and losses we collected as children fell away from us like last season’s designer coat.  But the real truth is we wear these childhood injuries like scars deep inside of us, and they are far uglier than any ill-fitting dress or unfortunate trend.  This is precisely why I know I must look at these scars, stare them in the face, and accept them as part of me while at the same time refusing to let them define me. 

This discussion has become a trend in my mind, in my world.  For a trend to lose ground, the masses must reject its power.  I know what I need to do.  Acknowledging any role my past has played in the closet of my life is the first step.  Cleaning house is second.  I must rid my space of negative feelings associated with my childhood.  I don’t ever want to forget the ugliness of the past because it has made me who I am; however, I am no longer a sad little girl desperate for love and attention.  I have had more blessings and richness in this life than I ever could have dreamed. 

When I think back to my childhood, I want to welcome its struggles as a sign of my resiliency.  After all, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right? Weren’t we all strong as kids to have made it to where we are now?  Therefore, can’t we derive empowerment from moderation and inner resolve? The two seem indelibly linked!  Even fashion icon Coco Chanel knew that luxury was not the opposite of poverty, and she revealed true wisdom when she said, “There are people who have money and people who are rich.” I do not need a revolving closet full of clothes and shoes to fill the void that poverty created.  I also do not wish to insult the many riches in my life by buying material possessions to take their place.  

Acknowledging the Past: Beginning to Forgive

Last week I started working part-time for a non-profit company whose business is to help foster self-esteem, courage, and confidence in girls.  My role is to help five teenage girls, who've been selected as scholarship candidates, write their scholarship essays.  The first priority is to get these girls comfortable with themselves and their stories.  Each of them has overcome adversity in some tremendous way and, with the help of this non-profit organization, has developed some of the necessary tools for building inner strength, optimism, charity, and all-around awesomeness.
I have worked with these girls for 8 hours, and I am already in love with them--their spirit, their passion, their beauty.  They are smart, hard-working, caring individuals who want to spend their lives making the world a better, safer place for others.

On Tuesday, I introduced an activity that was intended to help the girls understand a painful part of their past.  I asked each of them to write a letter of forgiveness to someone who had wronged or injured them.  The letter needed to be directly addressed to the person, and it needed to include the following: 1) what the person did to hurt you; 2) how it made you feel; 3) why you are writing the letter--to confront and forgive; and 4) why you forgive the person.  I said it was a letter they never had to give to the person unless they wanted to, but that whether they felt they could truly forgive at this time wasn't what was important; the important part was in releasing the pain and trying to forgive--practicing forgiveness.

All of the girls began writing without hesitation.  As I sat there pretty much staring at each of them in their vulnerability, their innocence, and their courage, I felt like I should be doing something myself.  So I began writing my own letter of forgiveness.  It started as something I would use as an example for the girls--and to show them that I wasn't asking them to do something I wasn't willing to do.  And then the program leader--the woman who hired me--started writing a letter of her own.

I wrote a letter to my biological father.  I will spare you all of the messy details, but basically I told him how much I hated him for abandoning me and my brother and for starting another family and pretending that we didn't exist.  I told him I hated him for various other ills I perceived I've suffered as a result of his neglect.  I also wrote that I forgive him for his wrongs, and his weakness.  The letter was easy to write.  I could sense two of the girls sitting across from me--they lifted their heads and put their pens down.  They were finished with their letters.  I was still scribbling away, faster now, but not because I was anxious to finish and not have the girls waiting on me; I had a lot to say, and my mind flung ideas out faster than I could capture them on paper.  I wanted to say more than I did--I hadn't realized just how much I wanted to say to him.

When all of us had finished, I proposed that we each read our letters.  I started.  I could set the example of reading the thing that had been kept a secret in the heart, and the girls would see how easy it was after all, how brave I was to share with them--people I'd practically just met, and they would happily follow suit.  I was not prepared for what happened.

As I read the letter, my voice began to shake.  I felt tears coming from...somewhere.  What was happening?  I was forty years old.  I had dealt with my childhood, and the injustices it brought.  My biological father had been dead for almost fifteen years.  I didn't cry when I heard of his death.  In fact, I'd never cried over him--not since the day he came to visit when I was nine years old and I clutched his pant leg, begging him not to leave.  And now, here I was, reading this letter--a letter he would never see--and I was an emotional mess.  I kept reading the best I could, pausing at sentences like “We needed you,” and at words like “forgive,” until I could say them.  Remembering the reasons I hated him was not as difficult as admitting them aloud.  Even more surprising was the fact that I hated him at all.  I'd spent my entire life avoiding thoughts of him, sweeping him and the mess he'd made of our family under the carpet.  I thought I'd transcended hatred, thought I had magically made a little temple of forgiveness in my heart that I never needed to acknowledge.  What I experienced in those few minutes of reading that letter to the first important man in my life was something for which I never could have prepared.

My colleague--the program director, stood up and hugged me and offered me a Kleenex.  And then an amazing thing happened.  She read her letter.  And she cried.  And then another amazing thing happened, two of the girls read their letters.  One cried; the other did not.  The two girls who did not read their letters cried.  They cried while we all read ours, and I am certain they cried because their pain was so heavy that they had to leave it on the page, as if saying the words out loud might somehow literally cause their hearts to break.  

When I designed this exercise, I thought it would be a good way for the girls to start getting comfortable with their stories so they can become effective writers about their stories.  I had no idea it would allow them to dig this deep.  And I certainly had no idea that I had any more digging to do in my own life.

Sometimes people think that their past traumas hold nothing of significance, and that what happened just goes away if they stop thinking about it.  But the truth is, we carry our injustices, our pain, and our pride with us for many years, and they become the scars that make us who we are.  To deny the scars is to deny parts of ourselves, the most important parts, the parts responsible for giving us grit, determination, strength, and resolve.  To acknowledge them is to do right by ourselves in some attempt, no matter how meager, to protect and to understand.  When we take a good, hard look at our past, we can learn to read it like a book, with all of its morals and messages, and we can learn to avoid the pitfalls and tragedies that have endangered us along the way.  Through reflection and education, we begin to see that we are capable of drawing and following a map, one that leads to happiness, success, and freedom.

One girl, in her letter, denounced her father for his sins against her mother, which included violent abuse, infidelity, and sexual disease transmission. She also raged against him, calling him “a disgusting excuse for a man,” for abandoning her.  I cried as she read her letter with the face of a stoic.  Her heart is hard, and she wears that fine mask of indomitability, an impenetrable layer of defensiveness, to protect herself.  She is worried about her scholarship essays because "it's not like [this non-profit organization] fixed everything and now I'm fine.  These problems are ongoing."   I smiled at her bold pronouncement of reality, and I assured her that she didn't need to be fixed or cured, and that certainly, if there is a cure for all the pain she's endured, she is the cure.  Only she can do the work necessary to heal.  And that is when she smiled.  And hope walked right in.