Happy New Year

2011 is almost over, and my 50th birthday is waiting for me in 2012. I am always hopeful that each new year will bring good things, but then years come and go and I am another year older and somehow in the same spot. Others around me are thriving and growing; this is as it should be I suppose. And it isn't middle age any more is it? Not too many live to the century mark, so the midpoint was reached a while ago. That is OK; it is what is supposed to happen.

I do know how fortunate I am, but it doesn't stop me from feeling regret or wanting things to be different.

Perhaps in a parallel universe, I am what I wish I were in this one. That's something. Conversely, a universe exists in which I am all ready dead. Glad to be cognizant of this one then. 2012, give me what you've got.

Kicking my Butt

Yesterday marked the halfway point in my 50th year on the planet, and, as usual, I thought about what I wanted to write but let the day go by without writing anything but work related emails and posts to my current literature class. Oh, I wrote two Christmas cards, but one was to the newspaper delivery woman, so I don't think that counts as writing even if I used a pen. As with much of my writing, I put it off, and it isn't for lack of ideas; I compose sentences and paragraphs, poems and essays, in my head all the live-long day, but the act of sitting and writing is daunting and fraught with messy obstacles. Just now, I have inched ever so slightly away from my opening which was to introduce the midway point of my 50th year on the planet and say something profound about having come halfway through the year, a whole six months, and look what I've done all ready. That is not going to happen.

As it turns out, my 50th year is kicking my butt nine ways to Sunday. Since my 49th birthday, I have not accomplished anything on my initial list of things that I wanted to do before turning 50, and, now that I am six months into it, I'm in danger of coasting to June. Coasting is fine, I suppose, if one is happy or at least content with the living of it. What am I coasting in or on? Skates? A sled? A car? On a bike? I haven't been on a bike in years. Or skates for that matter. Whatever it is, I'm heading for 50 with reminders all around. My friends from high school who were always a few months to a year older are having their birthdays. My teenage daughters teeter precariously on the precipice of saying that I am old to me and wait for the reaction. One compliments me at every chance, and the other matter-of-factly states that well, yes, you are old.

So here I am coasting and riding along, not always looking where I am going but following the road as it comes up. I'm healthy, husband and kids are healthy, we have jobs we don't hate, we are okay. My job isn't particularly going anyplace special, but I enjoy it and plod along in the day-to-day grading of papers and writing of emails. I was able to procure a supplemental adjunct position to add to my workload and paycheck in 2012, proving to myself that I can be hired even at almost 50, which I have been reading and hearing about a lot lately and how difficult it is. Teaching online is great in this case, because everything is done in writing and no one sees me. Perhaps if they did, they would not have hired me.

I have sent some poems out and been rejected so far this year, and I have applied for a poetry residency at the Millay Colony which I desperately want. I won't hear about that until February, but that would be a wonderful birthday present or writing coup or whatever it will be for me; in any case, I will be ecstatic if it happens. In the next few weeks, I am going to work on a collection for a contest for poets over 40. While I'm still in my 40s, I think that would be a good thing to do. So many will enter though, and the chances are slim. I am going to do it though, because at the end of my work I will have a finished collection. During the residency I could revise or work on something new. If that turns out to be a rejection, I will just have to suck it up and come here and write about it.

Promise exists in the next six months as long as I don't let the things that have been kicking my butt continue to do so. I have never been very good at fighting back, but maybe I can dodge those steel-toed boots with some footwork or possibly, changing the metaphor again, riding that bike with my feet on the pedals.

Thanks

It's the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, and I have some pumpkin bread in the oven, more like a cake really, in a bundt pan. The house smells good and feels warm. Like many, I am sitting and thinking about what I am thankful for, and I have the usual list of family and friends as well as all of the fortunate paths my life has taken. It occurs to me also that I should thank some people whom I don't know but who have changed my life however slightly or to a great degree and that I am better for having encountered their work in my life. They are writers and poets whose poems, stories, or novels changed the person I was because I was able to encounter the written text for the duration that I was willing to read it, once and sometimes more than once. The following list are those poets and writers who have made a profound impact on my life and the way that I think and what I believe about life on earth. They are in no particular order.

J. D. Salinger
Ernest Hemingway
Toni Morrison
Alice Walker
Zora Neale Hurston
Langston Hughes
Wallace Stevens
William Shakespeare
Robert Frost
William Carlos Williams
Doris Lessing
John Irving
Barbara Kingsolver
Virginia Woolf
Kate Chopin
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Christina Rosetti
John Keats
Lord Byron
George Eliot
J. K. Rowling
Nikos Kazanzakis
Thomas Lux
Stephen Crane
Octavio Paz
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Nadine Gordimer
Mark Twain
Charles Dickens
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Edgar Allan Poe
Percy Bysshe Shelley
William Golding
Elizabeth Bishop
Adrienne Rich
Sharon Olds
Sylvia Plath
Gwendolyn Brooks
Dylan Thomas

The list seems not to have an end, nor should it. I will send my thank you out into the universe, for I am thankful that these people who lived or live and create such powerful works that made me see the world differently, sometimes for a short time and sometimes forever. They have my gratitude and awe.

I haven't been writing anything just for me in a while, and this week I still have to focus on writing for work. I need to write my "philosophy of teaching" for an adjunct position; it is the last requirement of training. I've been gathering thoughts like clouds looming overhead ready to pour down the much needed rain any minute now but the sun keeps peeping out on other things that I need/want/like to do more than think about why and how I do what I have chosen to do in my life.

Did I choose it? I am not sure. I know that I am good at what I do; it is good to know that you are good at your work so it is fine to say it/write it. I have taught many students and I hope that some of them learned something from spending time in my classroom. I teach adults exclusively now, with the exception of my own children, and the philosophy has changed somewhat from when I used to teach high school. Not much though.
I started this paragraph asking if I chose to teach and then abandoned the question. I did not say as a kid that I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up, and I adamantly rejected the thought in college. I was going to be a writer and not become a teacher who wanted to be a writer and didn't have the talent. Fear, probably, made the choices for me all of my life.

Scary thought.

Moments

I like watching Project Runway with my daughters. They tell me they like it too; every Thursday night when a new one is on, we watch the designers compete, create, cry (so many criers), and console the one booted off the show. I like this ritual with my girls because we talk about what we like and don't like, what fashion is or should be, what art is or should be, and we all have different opinions. Talia surprises with her fashion sense; it's not always dark and sometimes has splashes of color, but never pink. Chloe appreciates the back stories and the process; this information always informs her decision about who should stay or go, but she is also aware of TV producers and their agendas for the show and advertising revenue. I'm always amazed at how smart they are, and of course I'm proud of their accomplishments.

If we can't watch on Thursday night because school nights are filled with so much homework, theirs and mine, we record the show to watch on the weekend. That is, if their schedules permit. At 13 and 16, they have demands on their time from friends and clubs and sports. I told Talia the other day that I couldn't quite remember the year I turned 13; I remembered 12 because I started 7th grade at Hocker Grove Junior High, and I remember 14 because we moved and I started 9th grade at Blue Valley High School. Thirteen seemed to be a blur. This morning I had a flash of a 13-year-old memory. I was at Coachlight Skate Center on a Friday night with two or three girlfriends from school. Roller skating was a past-time popular in the 70s, and we embraced the skating around the ring for a few hours, the snowball (when the girls stood by the wall waiting for the skating guys to come pick them to skate, sometimes holding hands--we wouldn't talk, just skate and hold hands, or not--all very strange now that I think about it), the pinball machines, and the snack bar. My parents or older sister would pick me up when the rink closed at ten or eleven. Is this all I have of 13?

The friends I skated with were also friends who were at all of the sleepovers I went to. We took turns spending nights in our different basements or rumpus rooms. We ate chips and drank soda (a treat for me that I never got at home), and played Truth or Dare. Perhaps I've blocked out the year I was 13 because of all of the bad Truth or Dare memories? I'm happy that my girls don't seem to play it all that much with their friends. But who knows? I didn't tell my mom anything. My girls tell me most things, but Talia admits that there are some things she won't tell me. OK.

Talia asked me yesterday whether if one day she were at a party and she called me to pick her up because she was drunk if I would pick her up. I said yes, I would pick her up whenever she called home and needed a ride, regardless of the reason. She then asked if I would be mad. I first said yes, and then thought that would make her decide not to call, so I qualified it with a maybe not really mad but disappointed response. She said, "I'm never gonna do that Mom!" OK

During a commercial break in Project Runway, Chloe said that I can't die because she wouldn't be able to live then. This was in response to every one of the designers explaining a personal family loss during the show. Chloe noticed that they all had a loss in their immediate families, which we knew throughout the show, but in the beginning of the finale, the final four competitors seemed so similar. I started to wonder if artists do need suffering as a muse. It seems so.

Earlier that day in the car, I was listening to All Things Considered. They were interviewing the poet, Maria Howe, and she read her poem "What the Living Do." She had written it as a letter to her brother who had died of AIDS, and it became a poem that speaks to many people who have suffered the loss of someone they were close to. It seems that she needed that suffering to inspire that poem, which was phenomenal and had me spellbound on my drive to the library to pick up Talia (one of my many duties as the family taxi). I think I prefer the poetry of Tomas Transtromer who I only recently heard of because he won the Nobel Prize for Literature this year. In his work, he finds the miraculous in the ordinary and notices the transcendent in the mundane.

Sometimes moments with Chloe and Talia are miraculous.

Life and Time

I thought that this blog would make me write every day, but it hasn't. I still have my many bad habits, including writing thoughts in my head that I think are gems and never writing them down anywhere so that they are lost to the wind. I think that as some people become older they let the time get the better of them. Time has the upper hand in our lives, and we can't do anything about that. Perhaps now that maybe neutrinos have the capability to travel faster than light, we might have the chance to go back or go forward in time and take back some of what's been taken, take back some of the control. I know, I'm blaming time, an inanimate object, a dimension, that neither thinks nor feels, but time seems to be direly cruel and continues to take me down each day with some new thing. I don't want to dwell on my physical health, beauty, or lack thereof, but it really sucks that these things wear out and become withered and fall out of use. And being wiser is no great trade-off. I know all of the "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" of life and I know all of the platitudes. I know enough to know what there is left and what has vanished. I'm almost midway through my 50th year alive on earth, and I'm looking and asking if this is all it is ever going to be. The platitudinous will answer that today is the first day of the rest of my life, and it is up to me to change things, and if I want something I can have it.

I was watching a sappy show this morning on Netflix streaming (another bad habit) and someone said, "Not everyone gets the life that they want." True enough.

REM-ories

REM has "called it a day" and I am calling up memories. My first listen was in the early '80s in Brothers' Tavern in Manhattan, Kansas. I thought I was so cool requesting all of the REM that the cute DJ was willing to play. It didn't hurt that he had a crush on my sister. She and I could go in the afternoon and listen to "Don't go Back to Rockville" and "So. Central Rain" in excess. We didn't sing along; who could? The mystique was that we were never quite certain of the lyrics. We set ourselves apart from the shit-kicking country crowds in Aggieville by embracing the alternative. I still feel apart from the crowd (unrealistically) in my fan-dom. I am no longer a young college girl searching for an alternative. I'm a mom in my 50th year alive and still affected by the voices and melodies of REM.


The cassette with Murmur on one side and Reckoning on the other kept me from extreme loneliness as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya. In my house with no electricity and no running water, I at least had Michael Stipe's voice crooning me to sleep; when the batteries ran dry, a 3-mile walk to the town to buy more was no problem. Listening to the songs now can sometimes bring me back to that house. I danced alone and sang out loud in my African house. I wore out that tape, but I still have it. Endless hours of listening to "Pretty Persuasion" and "7 Chinese Brothers" were almost transcendent. In "Camera" when he sings, "Alone in a crowd," I would turn up that sad little cassette player as far as it would go without distortion and sing along. I am forever indebted to my friend Bob for making that tape for me.


When "Losing my Religion" was playing everywhere, I was teaching and living in New York City. Andreas and I had an apartment in Astoria, Queens; listening to REM was a respite from the Greek music of the family gatherings, the christenings and memorials, the family dinners. "Losing my Religion" is still a song I don't pass through on my Zune. 


If you ask my daughters their favorite REM song, they will probably say "Shiny Happy People." I played the entire Out of Time cassette in the car for them on our rides to and from day care and school. They would request "Shiny People" and I would always oblige. The REM cool does not fade. When they sang this song with the Muppets on Sesame Street, we were forever in love.


So many CDs and songs later, I still like listening to Automatic for the People in its entirety. "Night Swimming" is a song I prefer to listen to with no one home or in the car and very loud. It's not a rocker; it's a song that goes into my bones. "Everybody Hurts" can usually make me cry. 


I'm playing Reckoning now and "So. Central Rain" just came on. Gotta go. I think I might know all the words now. 

The New School Year

I look forward to the quiet when the kids go back to school, but there is a downside. I have to converse with myself and listen to the answers. I have to confront what I do and how I do it with myself and come up short. I have to accomplish things in bulk so that it looks as if my life is not worthless.

As each year goes by, my life doesn't change at the same rate as my children's. For the last few years, my life has been the same; the work and the play. Nothing much changes. Without change I feel as if a weight has been placed on my chest and each day the weight increases. Trying to change when others don't want or need it is near impossible.

Working from home is a blessing and a curse. The gods of motherhood are laughing at me.

Painting Rooms

Painting a room used to be much easier. Now that I am in the third month of my 50th year, it is much harder than I ever remember it. I used to look at a room, imagine the color, and paint it. No aching anything; today, every muscle and joint are announcing their existence to me through the pain receptors in my brain. Ibuprofen is my constant companion, and I feel ancient.

Yesterday, my twelve-year-old daughter, Talia, and I painted her room a beautiful blue. It is a Disney paint color, "Infinity and Beyond!" She wanted a dark blue for her Harry Potter background; the trim on the molding and radiators will be a deep Poppy. She has posters and decals for the walls that she can move around; she bought a Hogwarts banner and a sign proclaiming platform 9 3/4. I love it that she wanted to redecorate, but I had to let her know that, for me, it would be the last time I paint a room. Sad.

I didn't feel this much pain when we painted our kitchen a little over a year ago, but I was much younger, and not as close to 50.

My Twenty-Four Year Relationship

Next month will mark twenty-four years that I've had a relationship with the Republic of Cyprus. My first visit was in 1987, at the end of September; before that Cyprus was a place in literature, a setting for Othello or the Greek Myths. I had no more knowledge of the island than of any other on the earth. But I came here with Andreas, my best friend, to meet his family and bring us closer since we had come to the realization that we would get married after we returned to the U.S. from our Peace Corps service in Kenya. Cyprus was another new place for me to learn about and through the eyes of someone I loved. Now, we are here for our annual trip when we bring our daughters, Chloe and Talia, to visit their grandmother and numerous relatives in and around Limassol, in the southern part of the island. We come in August, when the temperatures are high and the populace is in vacation mode with the coming of August 15th, the religious holiday celebrating the ascension of Mary to Heaven. Andreas' mother, Eleni, is usually fasting by the time we arrive, eating vegetables and legumes but no dairy or meats or leavened bread.

I have a love-hate relationship with the city of Limassol. I love it for visiting family and for its proximity to the coastline. I do not love the heat or humidity or the heavy traffic. I don't love the prevalence of strip bars and pornography or the constant building of high-rise apartments and hotels with no regard for the environment or for the residential neighborhoods that have existed here for so long. The influx of immigrants from numerous countries has changed the flavor of the city from a purely Cypriot Greek one to one that seems culturally un-congealed.

I love being here for the yearly experiences the island provides my daughters; they know all of their family from Illinois, Kansas, and New York to Tasmania and Cyprus. They are fortunate to have traveled here so much, and we are fortunate to be able to give this trip to them each year. Even so, the trip is sometimes hard on us as a family; at home we are not always together this much.

Taking my own Advice

I teach writing and urge people to write every day, yet I never follow that advice myself. I write sporadically and periodically but not daily. I read an article on changing habits and found myself nodding in agreement over all of the steps I should take to write every day, as a habit, but I have not taken that advice either. I don't think that I am a lazy person, but I am not an overly ambitious one. I sometimes wish that more ambition would find its way into my psyche. That I will become an ambitious goal-setter and do all of the things that I envision myself doing; that I will conquer my bad habits and replace them with good ones (I almost wrote healthy in place of good, but that would signal a topic change into the area of bodily health which I do not want to talk about now); that I will wake up and follow my plan for the day and see the end product in my mind while I achieve the small steps necessary to arrive at the destination, the goal. These things are not in me every day, though, and I muddle through my lists and days and weeks and months and then Wow! I'm another year older.

I teach writing and focus on process and how it all comes together into one huge life-changing revelation, but that is not what happens. I need to heed the words of writers past when they suggest that all that writing is is work and daily work if anything is going to ever come of it. I have to sit down and write every day or not. If not, then maybe I am not that writer I think I am. If so, then maybe something extraordinary will come of it, say a collection of poetry or short stories or maybe a novel or book of essays. Writing is a process, but the end-products are the only measures of what we have done. I have two poems published to show for four decades of writing. My craft is not perfected because it is not a daily habit. Changing habits is hard.

When I was a teenager, I thought that I should have to suffer for my craft. I should live in poverty or in fear of my life for a period of time, or I should struggle to live by my wits alone away from people. I should travel, but in a way in which I will need to work hard to survive. I have never done this, and I am still not the writer I envisioned nor do I have the writing life that I want. I continually refer to my next life as if I am so sure that there will be one where I will have another chance to become the writer I want to become (and here invites the "just do its" and the "go for its" which do not work on me). Or I may return as a giant millipede.

Neglect

I have been negligent. Not only of this blog but of my art. I need to write because it fills me up with more ideas to write about and more ideas about life. I need to write to fill my soul, and I know that is a cliche, but what can I do? The less I write, the worse a writer I become, and I have to remember that. I need to write daily and not just think about writing, but here I am writing about being negligent; I can find many journal entries in which I declare my renewed promise to write every day and then weeks and months go by without an entry or word. I could find those entries now, but that is the kind of thing that keeps me from writing. Whenever I stop to search for an idea, a book, an artifact, a sound bite, a quotation, a reference, a photo, a yearbook, I will inevitably be derailed and never return to the piece of writing that sparked the need for the search. Now, here, I could use a cliche (but I digress), but having read my brother's Facebook status in which he avowed that he would never use that phrase, I will refrain. He might read this and roll his eyes when he sees it. I do have a gift for digression, and here I could ask for your forgiveness, Dear Reader (is anyone a fan of that archaic convention?).

I have been neglectful of many things, but I think I will focus on things that I do not neglect. Work is one; when I have a job and am being paid for my work, I put it first. My children: I do not neglect their needs or wants most of the time; when they need my attention, I drop whatever I am doing, even work, and attend. I am sorry to say that that is the extent of my un-neglected things list. I am trying to think of other things that I do not neglect, but nothing is coming to me.

I neglect writing, first and foremost, even when it is my most dear friend. It clears my head and purges my emotions in that Aristotelian way it has for doing so. Writing is the best therapist I've ever had, and I have had a few. I love going to a therapist (in spite of the high cost) because for at least an hour every other week (I know that sounds excessive, Dear Reader, but you would have to understand the circumstances, and I shouldn't digress into them here) I can talk about myself, my life, and my emotions to someone who is going to listen and maybe steer me into a revelation (I will NOT say "Aha moment"!) or two so that I am purged (yes, I am a fan of metaphorical purging,) enough to be able to function in other areas of my life. Like a therapist, my writing (or the paper or the reader or the computer screen) will listen, and I don't have to edit while I'm doing it; I can save the edits for later when my head is clear, when my thoughts are more lucid, when my emotions are manageable, and when my time is my own. It is not a wonder that I have many unedited pieces, this one included.

Just now I left the laptop to find the quotation of Saturday's crypto-quote which I deciphered this morning; my writing here warranted a retrieval of the reference as so much of writing does by leading me to other things in my life and surroundings. Saturday's quote by Kurt Vonnegut, the only writer I have ever written to or wanted to know personally and hang out with, spoke to the practice of art: "To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it."

My soul has grown, if infinitesimally, with this writing. One thing I know of my soul, or inner voice or art, whatever it is, it is resilient and forgiving, no matter how many promises to return I fail to keep.

The Things we Care About

I can't dwell on what's happened, because then I would live in a bubble of gloom where every now and then a bit of fun or happiness might seep in or peer through but not emanate from inside. One day, it will swallow me up and I won't know how to feel happy.

I'm not one for positive affirmations or positive self talk; I tried it a few times and mocked myself doing it so I thought I'd better find another way to look on the bright side. I usually go for a catharsis in great literature or film to purge the bad feelings. I haven't done that so much lately, but teaching literature is effective for keeping my mind on the more momentous themes in life.

Why am I so upset about things? They are just things, possessions, items that don't hold meaning until I assign it to them. The meaning does not emanate from within; just as in mythology, an object or place is not significant until and unless humans assign symbols or metaphors to that object or place. The objects, when lost, can move into the realm of story and myth.

I have to remember that and keep reading.

The Trouble with Families

"What's done is done and cannot be undone."~Lady Macbeth

Of course she was talking about murder. In family arguments, though, it often seems that this rings true of things said that can never be unsaid or feelings hurt that cannot be unhurt. Excepting murder, I always have a glimmer of hope, sometimes way up at the front of the cave into which I've crawled or followed others in to dark areas where few creatures live, that, with time, heated arguments will cool, feelings and words will soften in intent, and mending of fences will eventually happen. Frost knew, however, that mending a fence only means mending the division between people, so even if fences are mended, a fence still exists.

At the risk of throwing together so many metaphors that you won't know what to do with, I will say that I don't know any way out of this quagmire of bad feeling between me and my siblings except to one day, and it won't be soon, say "I forgive you" or "I'm sorry." The misunderstandings are extensive and come from vast differences in upbringing (even in the same family), environment, and experience. Our ages span three decades and our adolescent years, which I believe shape our personality as much as the first five years of life, were spent in different times with different social histories and in different places with different people. My eldest brother spent two years in Vietnam after he was drafted; I was seven then. He married when he returned home, and I was still a little girl.

By the time I was 15, my three older siblings had been living their adult lives, while I was embarking on adolescence and still growing into my adulthood. My sister, even younger, was disconnected, too, from the older ones; she was closest to me in age, and, as a result, is closest to me now. My coming of age took place in the 70s with college around the corner in the 80s, very different times from the 50s and 60s in which my two older brothers and older sister lived with my much younger parents. As time passed, my parents grew more tired and less parental it seemed, although there was a resurgence of discipline when the youngest, Teresa, began to spread her wings in high school. In college by then, I was not there to see their fear that their youngest daughter was becoming an independent woman.

All five of us are siblings and have the same parents, but that is not enough for us to get along or agree; this would be okay if civility were intact when tempers flared. This is not the case with most families, I assume, and certainly not with mine. One thing that we might be able to point to that is similar for each of us is that we were brought up to be independent and think for ourselves. We were taught to work for everything we have and be thankful that we are able to work. Beyond the work ethic, though, our personalities could not be more individual and different. These differences cause unrest, especially when we are discussing emotionally charged issues such as how to handle our situation with our mother, now in assisted living and suffering short-term memory loss that has been diagnosed as early dementia. The volatile cocktail of educational, regional, emotional, and physical differences is one that explodes when discussing our mom and her needs and wishes.

What's done is done, and I could go on. My brain hurts from thinking and over-thinking everything, from replaying and rewinding to replay events of the past week, from loving my mom unconditionally, and from placing conditions on the love for my older siblings.

Let's exchange charity.
I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund;
If more, the more thou hast wrong'd me.
My name is Edgar, and thy father's son.
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us:
The dark and vicious place where thee he got
Cost him his eyes.

(King Lear, V, iii)

It is a great tragedy.

The Soundtrack, Part II

We moved from the Lenexa house to an apartment in the same school district, so although my school didn't change, my neighborhood and friends did. I still had the David Cassidy obsession that was stronger than the Donny Osmond one for some reason, and I remember looking forward to "The Partridge Family" on TV on Fridays when my mom would let us eat in the living room so we could watch at seven. "The Brady Bunch" was on right before or after, but I wasn't as interested in that show except for the brief desire to be Peter's girlfriend. The Brady Bunch singing was too hokey for me even in the 4th grade.

Fourth grade was the year we moved again near the end of the year to a bigger house and a new school district in Merriam, Kansas. I was shy and didn't like being the "new girl" in school, so I didn't talk to many people until I met my soon to be best friend in the whole world, Jodie. I thought she was so cool. Her mom sewed ruffles at the bottom of her jeans and decorated them with cool patches. She lived near me, so we rode bikes together and spent weekends either at her house or mine for sleepovers, staying up very late and watching music shows on TV, listening to the radio, and playing games like Life and Masterpiece that I didn't have. She loved Donny Osmond too, and we listened to the first album after his voice changed with "The Twelfth of Never" on it. I can still embarrass my kids by singing that song.

Jodie and I found another obsession. We watched "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour" (I'm not sure if that is the correct full title), and we thought that Cher was the coolest person on earth. We grew our hair and fingernails long, and Jodie had the limp wrist gestures and the licking of the lips exactly right. All we wanted were Cher albums and 45s. There were other songs by other artists we liked too, after we heard them on the radio or saw them on TV, but to have a Cher album would be the best.

My first purchase of a 45 record was Neil Diamond's "Cherry Cherry." Jodie and I had listened to it one night at her house. We were on the floor of her room in our sleeping bags and listening to the radio; we laughed so hard at the lyrics, but I think it was because it was probably about 2 in the morning, and we were ten. I rode my bike to the TG&Y (a precursor of a Wal- or K-mart type store) with the correct change in my pocket. I think that 45s were about 50 cents in 1974, and I had figured in the tax and was ready. I knew I wasn't supposed to ride my bike that far from home, but I had to have "Cherry Cherry." The TG&Y was about 5 miles from our house, if memory serves, and I knew the way because we rode in the car there all the time. I flawlessly and without incident rode there, bought the record, put it inside my shirt, climbed back on my Huffy and rode home. I made the mistake of telling my little sister, Teresa, what I'd done and although I swore her to secrecy, she told Mom and I was grounded from my bike for a week. It was worth it for Neil.

The Soundtrack, Part 1

So I had this idea that I should remember, connect, and write about all of the songs, popular or embarrassing, that would make up the soundtrack of my life. This is hard to do, especially since I had no idea that I listened to music so much, even when I was a little kid. My first memory of singing a song that was on the radio (of course no MTV, mp3's, or even cassette tapes then; I am 49), was when I was in Kindergarten and my best friend, Dwayne, was in first grade. He lived next door and had what I thought was the biggest swing-set in the world. He and I would swing and sing. I remember singing so loud and watching the trees move closer as I rose higher. We sang "Purple People Eater" most of the time, but a tiny flash of memory hits me when I think of Dwayne and the song "A World of Our Own" by the Seekers (I think) plays in my head. A good song to swing to.

My family moved quite a bit throughout my childhood; I think my sister, Teresa, and I counted 17 or 18 times before college. The next music memory is in another town. We moved from Garnett, Kansas, where Dwayne and I played and sang, to Lenexa, where we would stay for about three years. In that time, I remember listening to music. Having three teenage siblings in 1969 meant there would be music. I listened to 45's on a small record player in the room I shared with my two sisters, the older one probably wishing she could just get away from the two little kids who pestered her, and, coincidentally, played her records. Three 45's come to mind and I think I might still have one of them. Teresa and I played Tommy Roe's "Sweet Pea" over and over while we acted it out with stuffed animals. We also liked The Stones' "Honky Tonk Woman" and The Carpenters' "Rainy Days and Mondays." An eclectic mix for sure. At seven I had no idea what these people were singing about, but I liked the music.

Those 45's were not the only music exposure at the house in Lenexa. My best friend in the neighborhood was Sherri (I am not even sure how she spelled her name); she was a year or two older, and she introduced me to The Osmonds, Bobby Sherman, and The Partridge Family. My life was changed forever. I dreamed of meeting Donny, Bobby, and David while I listened to them sing only to me, and the thousands of other little girls who had the same dreams.

My Poetry Blog

I thought I'd post a link to my poetry blog; makes it easy for readers to go back and forth.

The List

I have been making a mental list of things I should do before the 50th anniversary of my birth in 2012. I decided that I should commit them to writing, so here goes.

1. Learn Greek enough so that I can join the family conversations during our annual trips to Cyprus.
2. Select an instrument and begin learning or take lessons.
3. Take singing lessons.
4. Write a complete collection of poetry and send to publishers.
5. Have breast reduction surgery.
6. Write a book with my friend, Melinda.
7. Begin classes for my PhD.
8. Plant garlic (in October, to be harvested in summer 2012).
9. Redecorate one of the bathrooms; change counters in kitchen.
10. Buy more clothes.

I will add to the list as I think of things. It's not really a "bucket list," but just a few things that need to be done before the big 50.

Summer Vacation

I have never really liked summer. I always looked forward to time off school when I was a student and then later when I was a high school teacher. That lovely first day of summer vacation after the teaching year was quite nice. Now that I am no longer a public school teacher with set vacation time, I really don't like summer. I don't like the heat, and I don't like the pressure of having to do something that hasn't been planned for me. Now that I have teenagers, I hate that if they are lazy and do nothing with their summer, then it is my fault. I should encourage and do things with them and I should somehow make them do things so that others will not see that they are lazy and don't want to do anything. They are not the same, my kids, but they each have to be prodded when they are faced with a lot of free time.

We have trips planned, to Kansas and Cyprus, to visit family. We are going to spend two days in Amsterdam, too, on the way to Cyprus. That might be fun. Andreas has found a hotel and is planning the trip.

As I said, I don't like the heat; especially now that I am overweight, I don't like the clothes for summer and I hate how I look. I love traveling, but with the heat, people who I don't see often throughout the year see me only in my ugly summer clothes that show way too much skin and they are not excessively short or skimpy. Any amount of skin is too much I think.

And now summer vacation starts after Friday. The girls will be out of school. I'm working at UOP so I still have things to do. They, on the other hand, have a sea of free time at which they are now gazing out upon.

Summer Solstice

The solstice begins tomorrow a little after one. I love the word solstice for its sibilance, much like the word sibilance. The soft hissing sensation on the tongue makes the summer solstice sound so nice. In truth it is usually hot, and I don't like hot weather any more. I used to, but now, I guess because I am old or getting older or whatever I should say so no one will have a reply, now I don't like hot weather at all.

Going to Stonehenge in England for the solstice would be a great trip. I could put it on my list of things to do before I turn 50 at the end of this, my 50th year. But alas, that one won't fit into my time frame; it will come after my birthday as it always does, and I cannot go to England today in time to be there for sunrise tomorrow. Just can't happen.

So I better get to the list and find things to do during my 50th year before I have to write 50 on forms or check the box for 50 and over. Shudder. No sibilance there.

The Mammogram - Not for the Squeamish

The receptionist said she had to update my information. Among the questions was "Do you have a choice of religion?" to which I answered, "No." Odd question in the radiology department; do many people die in the x-ray room in need of last rites or something? I answered questions about work and home and names and dates and then waited for my annual mammogram like the dutiful woman that I am. Everyone is overtly nice and obviously courteous; they want to make their mammography patients feel at ease before they squeeze their breasts in a vise. I went through the door and down the corridor, and Mary, the technician, if that is the correct title, asked me more questions about menopause and menstruation, giving birth and breast cancer history. I never remember the date of my last period. You'd think after putting up with it for 37 years, I'd know when it occurs.

I went into the dressing room, removed my shirt and bra (under which I was not to have put on any deodorant because in addition to the pain, I should stink too), and donned the periwinkle blue robe with white trim, open in the front. Mary called for me to go on in, and I walked toward the "machine" in the middle of the small, dark room. It appeared to rise up higher as I walked in, eventually looming over me with its plates open. Mary reminded me that she had also done my last mammogram. I nodded and smiled. I remembered her from last year; she continued talking during the exam to keep my mind on things other than my breast flattening more than I thought possible as I thought that the last squeeze might really be the last one; no, one more. This time was the same. She told me about her pregnancy with her twins and how they were in some kind of breech position which meant that they were kicking each other in the head. She had had a Cesarean of course, but the babies had been healthy and of decent weight. She said that her now adult children were in transition now, preventing her and her husband from buying a condo in Hollywood, Florida, where she grew up and where she would like to retire. I stood listening with my most sensitive appendage held in the grip of a machine from which I would not know how to extricate myself if Mary happened to faint or have a heart attack in the middle of my mammogram.

Three pictures of each breast; the first is not so bad. The second felt as if my nipple was ripping slowly from my body, and although I had said that I claimed no religion, I distinctly (and probably louder than I thought) took a deity's name in vain. I apologized; Mary was nonplussed and said, "curse away, it will be over soon." The third position was a relief from the second in that the lightning bolts of pain had stopped. The entire procedure takes maybe ten minutes. And yes, they feel like really long minutes.

Now it's done, and I can wait another year to go back where Mary (if she hasn't moved to Florida by then) will talk to me again about the onset of menses or whether I've gone through menopause yet. She will tell me that I am brave and that the pictures look fine, and I'll smile as I walk out, my boobs still throbbing a little.

On the 49th Anniversary of my Birth

Today is my 49th birthday, and today I start living my 50th year on this planet. I'm fortunate to be healthy and relatively happy with numerous people to be thankful for in my life, which poses a philosophical problem as I do not thank any deity for my life or the people in it since I do not believe in one. I am grateful for many things, but I am still bitter about quite a bit too, so with the sappy sentimentality come the caveats that things could and sometimes should be better. I am not one for positive affirmations or Norman Vincent Peale quotes; I am more contemplative in my search for truth, preferring Keats or Byron or Dickinson to contemporary self-help writers and gurus. I suppose I have created my life, although I really think that life just happens and takes a person along its path and we really cannot choose, as I think Frost knew deep in his heart after so much heartache. His regret of the path he took is so misunderstood; the path not taken, the one that everyone else took, would have made an easier life for him, but he chose the other one because of his temperament and his abilities. These things determine where we are drawn and sometimes quartered (Apologies for the pun).