Sticks and stones, and words

Digging my toes into the warm sand beside a crystal-clear alpine lake (Tenaya Lake, at 8,000 feet near Tioga Pass in Yosemite National Park) last Saturday, July 13, I watched something really curious.  Fifteen-year-old Calvin and fifteen-year-old Joe, buddies since their days of  sippy cups, overalls, and afternoon naps, made up a new game on the beach.  It involved throwing stuff at each other, mostly small rocks and the occasional short stick.  Calvin crouched in the water, scooping up handfuls of pebbles and pelted them at Joe, while Joe stood at the water's edge scooping up projectiles to hurl at Calvin.  They howled and laughed like only teen-aged boys can, swooping and cracking from manly baritone to little-boy screech as they moved farther and farther apart, laughing louder as they called out "you got me!", before moving back into close range, and beginning again with increasing the distance. There was no trace of hostility in this game.  It was as if the sting of the pebbles on their chests, arms, legs, and sometimes even heads couldn't possibly hurt at all.  Sticks and stones, apparently, did NOT break their bones; in fact, they seemed to be drawing the boys into a testosterone-fueled, hilarity-laced ritual of bonding via chucking stuff at each other.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" 

It's odd how this one-year anniversary of Andre's death is teaching me about resilience, despite the sticks and stones that life has hurled in the past year.

Last Thursday, we buried Andre's ashes in an unadorned plot (we will eventually have a stone marker there) in the shade of a tree in a small, private cemetery on a farm road in the Central Valley.  Our pastor, a wonderfully earthy, maternal, un-pretentious vessel of the Holy Spirit, arrived there a few minutes before we got there, and made sure that we were able to see and touch the real thing: the damp, crumbly dirt and the hole itself, stripping away the astro-turf and plastic-flowers that the cemetery manager had prepared. We didn't need to be shielded by fakery from the reality of what we were doing: committing what was left of Andre to a hole in the ground.  When the time came, I was able to kneel on the dirt, getting mud on my jeans, and put the remains of my husband of 18 years into a hole in the ground, along with a few of the roses from our yard that Andre loved, roses that he said he grew for me.  My daughter and her best-buddy, Megan put letters into the hole, letters they had written to Andre as part of their grief-processing.  We all had an opportunity to shovel some dirt into the hole, and as we were doing this, my younger son, Mark decided that he needed to participate and say what was in his heart.

"Fuck you, you son of a bitch! I outlived you!", he half-shouted, half-sobbed, tears slipping out and sneaking down his cheeks, before he retreated to his plastic chair in the half-circle under the trees.

There were a couple of gasps, but mostly there was permission to let go of the anger that mixed with grief at this last good-bye.

So there were rocks, and mud, and thorny flowers, and secret words on paper, and public swear-words, and nobody got hurt...sticks and stones and words that cannot hurt me.

And after the burial, we found a place on highway 120 that served handmade burgers and fries, and ice cream shakes in 51 flavors, on the way to our reserved campsite near Yosemite.  Over the next couple of days we hiked and camped, and played in water wherever we could find it, and we stood in awe at the majestic rocks and towering trees in Yosemite National Park :  more sticks and stone that didn't hurt us, but helped us heal instead.

Late on Saturday night, on the actual one-year anniversary, to the day and hour, I was feeling haunted, even as exhaustion had graciously worn my children down to sleep, and I texted a compassionate friend who had agreed to stay awake for me, in case I needed a voice and an ear on the other end of a phone line to get me through the haunted hour.  We talked until 1 a.m., well past the worst of the haunting for me:  words that not only didn't hurt; they healed.

Since then, I've had a couple of days of thinking about the possible hazardous sticks and stones of my kids' growing independence, of letting my older children stretch their growing wings: I put Calvin on a plane by himself, with instructions for connecting to a bus and then a ferry boat, on a first solo trip to see his uncle in Washington.  I stood back and watched Patti try her hand at playing electric bass in her youth group praise band, her first-ever attempt at the instrument in public--no coaching on my part, no "vetting" of her music, just a ride to rehearsal and a report of "she totally kicked butt, even on the stuff she was sight-reading" from the leader of the band afterwards.

And I had a day this week that was full of words that, at the time, felt like more hurt than I could bear, but I'm still standing.  In the space of one day, I had a heart-twisting phone conversation with someone very dear to me, a conversation that ended with what might be good-bye for good, and then later that day I got word that a neighbor had decided that the loud words (Ok, yes, we are a family of yellers, and we sometimes forget that the windows are open) coming from my house were a good reason to call the authorities to report suspected child abuse (??!!)   (Is it just me, or is the irony here almost choking?  A year AFTER my abusive husband's death, some neighbor decides to call the police about yelling? )  Painful, honest words, passive-aggressive untrue accusations, and I'm still standing.

So, to summarize the past week:  sticks and stones flung:  no damage.
Words of several pointed shapes flung: no damage that can't be healed with the tincture of time.

It might be time to revise that bit of childhood doggerel.

Sticks and stones might break my bones, but only if they're big enough and thrown with malice, AND words MIGHT hurt me, but I'll recover with time.

Nah... it's just not as catchy, is it?

The only way out is through

A few months back, I wrote about a tactic I'd learned from a bicycling friend, for riding my bike through a narrow place.  If you haven't read that post, you might want to check out that entry, about finding a spot to focus on, just on the other side of the obstacle. (if you click the highlighted text, you'll go to that entry).  In short, I discovered that if I can find a pebble, a stick, a crack, even a dark spot on the pavement, just on the other side of the narrow gateway, I can ride my bike through without wobbling.

This month, which somehow started in the last week of June, with my eldest son's birthday, has been one continuous "narrow gateway", and I've been wobbling all over the place.  There are painful memories of one of Andre's most serious loss-of-control/out-of-touch-with-reality moments that happened at the end of that birthday celebration last year, a moment that terrified us all, and a moment that, in retrospect, should have been the one that caused me to pack up the kids and whatever we could grab and leave the house.  But we didn't.  Who knows how differently, possibly worse, things would have ended if we had. Andre was not one to lose graciously, and he would have seen it as my "winning" if I had taken the kids and tried to leave then.

So,that night, as I had done so many times before, I simply talked him down, tucked the kids away in bed or in their rooms, and prayed for the strength to keep loving my husband out of his "moods", as I thought of them.

This year, we marked my son's birthday with three celebrations that were totally different from last year.  On the weekend before his birthday he hosted some friends for several hours of harmless paintball-shooting mayhem, followed by pizza and cake.  And then on his actual birthday, we were watching the Oakland A's beat the Cinncinnati Reds, and Calvin got to keep a ball thrown into the stands by Yoenis Cespedes, this year's star outfielder.  The next morning, we packed up our gear and headed to Bodega Bay for some camping.

But no matter how much I have tried to wrap this time in fun, the constant "sneaker waves" of memories (I've explained those, too, in a previous post.  Click here to read it. )  are making us all a little crazy: short-tempered one minute, depressed the next, soaking in the delights of summer: birthday parties, sunshine, baseball, beaches, outdoor time, and then suddenly we're lost, swamped in last year, and echoes of other years' bad times with Andre's illness. Multiply those waves by 5 people, and you get a picture of the emotional chaos around here this month.

This week, as the 4th approaches, the sneaker waves keep washing me back to last year's final getaway with Andre.  Last year, on the 3rd of July, we hopped aboard a plane for Maui, courtesy of my generous employer, for a few days of adults-only R&R (and a couple of business meetings for me).  That time, despite the gorgeous romantic setting of the west side of Maui: palm trees, beaches, rainbows, posh accommodations... was full of "I am suffocating and I don't know how much longer I can keep this up" moments.  Looking back from the vantage point of the past year, that week becomes part of the final downward slide to Andre's death, and what could have been fond memories of Andre's last full week of life in a beautiful place are stained by that knowledge

Last night, I got brave and allowed myself to sit through the fireworks at the end of "The Singing Flag" , a patriotic musical revue that is performed locally every year on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th of July.  Single shots are the worst, as they have the power to drag me back instantly to the moment of Andre's death.  I've had some awful moments with small firecrackers and even doors slamming over the past year.  But last night, after I breathed through the first couple of single firecracker shots, I was actually ok.

It probably helped that I was with my kids, with my youngest child sitting on my lap and critiquing the height, color, and pattern-spread of each shell as it exploded.  And we were with our dear friends,Gina and Peter, the ones who arrived first on my doorstep the night of Andre's suicide.  That awful night, Gina was the one who stepped right into thinking and managing for me--a job that would go on for months, but started in those first awful hours:  making a plan to get the kids out, figuring out where we would go, what we would do that night, washing the blood off my feet and hands, and helping me through having my mugshot taken by the police, and insisting that a female police officer be permitted to go back into my bedroom (as I was not), to retrieve clean clothes for me to wear when I left the house.  

Gina is fighting her own battle now.  She was diagnosed with breast cancer in April, has had surgery, and is now bravely and calmly strategizing her way through chemotherapy, with radiation to follow.  When I'm tempted to think that my life is complicated, I don't have to look very far to be reminded that it's not all that bad.   Maybe that's a pebble on the path for me--some perspective.

Our upcoming trip to Yosemite (my pastor has called it "granite therapy") on the day we will put Andre's ashes into a grave is another pebble to steer for, on the way through this narrow gateway.  Funny... to think of those massive slabs of granite as "pebbles"...

But I'm finding that I might need a much larger stash of pebbles on the pavement to get me through each hour of the next week or so.  I guess I'd better start filling my to-do list with "pebbles", in case I need to toss some in front of me, to aim at them as I navigate this narrow gate that seems to go on forever.

Ok, maybe that's a bit too big a pebble... :-)

Location, location, location

Recently, I was working on finding some real estate, but not the usual kind.  It's just the latest turn in the journey toward the New Normal ( sometimes I worry that I'll end up in the old "Normal", and I think that's in Oklahoma... How confusing would that be? ... sorry, blonde font on...).

It's June 14th, and we're just under a month away from the 1-year-anniversary of Andre's death, and the kids and I are still digging out around here. Here are a few updates since the previous blog posting:

The "toy car" (a 1981 Porsche 928 that needed constant tinkering) has been sold and moved out of the garage, along with the majority of the spare parts that Andre had stockpiled.  Some techy kid in Oregon now gets to figure out "what's that new noise?"  and I have space in the garage for my minivan.

I'm deep into my master's degree program studies (and loving it, even though I'm struggling to keep up with the paper-writing load. But it's writing about psychology, so, really, how hard can that be for an enthusiastic armchair shrink and would-be journalist anyway? ).

The kids have finished school for the summer.

There's a delightful, thoughtful, funny,smart, music-loving man who seems to like hanging out with me these days and we see each other just about every weekend, and talk on the phone nearly every day.

On the day after tomorrow, I'll do my big run in the San Francisco Half Marathon (if you haven't yet donated to the American Brain Tumor Association, the organization whose work I'm supporting with my attempt at a run, here's the link:  http://hope.abta.org/site/TR/TeamBreakthrough/TeamBreakSF?px=2163952&pg=personal&fr_id=2570)

In early May, I had the unexpected... well, I won't call it "pleasure"... of emergency gallbladder removal, and a six week NO-training recovery period, which made all of the above a little bit more complicated than I might have liked, but thanks to the generous efforts of friends and neighbors, my kids survived my sudden hospitalization unscathed and I'm on the mend now.  I'm seriously anxious about being the very last straggler across the finish line in Sunday's race, but surely that is pretty much a first-world problem.

And so, with all that running in the background, my latest project is getting my head and heart around the upcoming 1-year mark, figuring out how the kids and I will get ourselves through that tough anniversary, and working on what to do with Andre's cremated remains.  In the immediate aftermath of his death, I knew I'd be dealing with this question, but at the time, it felt like too much to handle, and that is, I guess, the advantage of cremation: there's no rush on dealing with the remains.  So, the large, heavy (seriously, who knew it would be that heavy?) wooden box, the size of a shoebox, with a brass plate engraved with the name, Andre Hedrick has been sitting inside a suitcase inside the back of my closet since last August, when the funeral home turned over his ashes to me.



...except that I'm feeling like it's TIME.  And soon.  So, I made a call to my pastor, and got the name of a local cemetery that has niches for ashes... and got, after an ugly bit of refusing to play "what do you want to spend?", a "bottom-line" price quote of $4,000 !!!   I try very hard these days not to be rude to people, but I was so shocked that my usually empathetic, polite-to-others outlook dropped right to the floor along with my jaw and I said, "that's freakin' ridiculous!"  The poor salesperson then scrambled around to give me a quote for " a place to scatter the ashes" for roughly half that price.  (Um... if I wanted to just scatter them, I could do that for free, lady.)

She seemed puzzled when I told her that was equally ridiculous.

I unplugged my cell phone earpiece, pulled out of the parking lot, and began driving my errands, complaining in my head to God, the universe and anyone else who would listen about what a horrible racket the funeral industry is, preying on people in a vulnerable state.  But it wasn't until I got myself out of my pity party mode and began to spend some time with my heart in Andre's better spaces, as much as I can access them, that I began to get an inkling of what to do.

As I rounded a corner and made the turn into the hardware store, the answer came to me.   Andre talked often about how much he hated the Bay Area, and longed to move someplace out in the country and telecommute. Seemingly, out of the blue, I remembered a cowboy town, about two hours away, on Highway 120 in the Central Valley, a place where the Hedrick family always stopped on the way home from camp in the Sierra, to shop for Andre's favorite Wrangler jeans (by the numbers, MWZ13, 38x30 ) at Tractor Supply Company.  It always felt like Andre's demons didn't reach him there, for that short space of time in a place that felt like a slice of Tennessee dropped into California.


With a call to the cemetery in that little cowboy town, I got a quote for a very affordable price, for a burial spot, with a headstone.  The dear lady on the phone said, "You just give me 48 hours notice before you come, and I can be sure that you also have some chairs and a shade canopy for your burial, hon."   I cain't help it (yes, that's "cain't", in that soft Southern/rural twang that always makes my shoulders drop), I just instinctively like people who call me 'hon'.  A second call to my pastor got her enthusiastic response to the idea, along with her willingness to drive all that way and pretty much eat up her whole day, along with some logistical brainstorming on picking the exact date and time for the burial.  She even helped me come up with a plan to take the children camping near Yosemite, so as to be "outta Dodge" on the anniversary itself.  (Oh, and houseburglars, I just got the alarm re-connected, the video system working again, and the neighbors will be on-alert, so don't try anything stupid.)

With a change of location:  from "where it's convenient" to "where it's right" and from self-pity to a last bit of tender remembering the man that Andre used to be, the marking of this horrible anniversary is feeling manageable.  I know it won't be easy.  Nothing so far has been easy, really.  But somehow, I think we'll get through it with a minimum of horror and maybe some new memories of our first visit to Yosemite to soften the harder memories of mid-July 2012.

Last year, in the days immediately following Andre's death, a very dear friend made me a "mourning music" CD that contained this piece, among many others that spoke comfort to me.  As we come up on the anniversary, the lyrics of this one are speaking to me again:  (If you click the lyrics, you'll go to a YouTube video where you can hear the piece.)

"For He shall give his angels charge over thee, and their hands shall hold and guide thee.  They shall uphold thee in all the ways thou goest. They shall protect thee. "

Tonight, I'm very aware of all those angelic hands that have brought me and the kids this far.  And I'm so grateful.

Pain-free...what a concept....

On a Saturday a couple of weeks ago, I ran the farthest I have run since last July, and I ran my fastest per-mile time ever. No, don't ask me for the numbers. They are NOT impressive in the world of runners. They are only important to me, as I work up from "I can't do this", to "I think I can, I think I can..." 

I ran pain-free, and that’s the part that got me thinking.  But first, you need the backstory.

Last Spring, in my "Before" life, I started training for a half-marathon for the first time in my life. I had never been a runner in my life. I was eager and had no idea what I was doing.

I ran too fast, too often, too long.  I paid no attention to form, or working up my mileage slowly, or running only every OTHER day,  and within about 6 weeks, I was in such pain that I couldn’t make it through even a mile.  It turned out that I had a stress fracture in my heel, achilles tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, and pain in my hips and knees. 

And I couldn’t fix it on my own.  It wasn’t enough to simply focus on form, cut back the miles, walk more and run less, stretch, do exercises, use various muscle rubs,  wear different shoes, buy expensive inserts... although I did all those things.  So, I went to a sports-medicine doctor who x-rayed my painful foot and gave me the news:

I had to give up on running.  Period.  For six weeks. 

But I just couldn’t let go of my plan to run my first-ever half-marathon, so I discovered cross-training:   I hobbled to the pool, wearing a boot-cast, strapped on my waterproof iPod and my float belt and I jogged in the water. I looked ridiculous. I really missed running, but there was no way that I could continue to run, even if I'd been given the all-clear. It just plain hurt too much.  

And one day I decided to hop on my bike (leaving my boot cast at home) and try riding along the miles of trails around here. Even though my bike at the time was the wrong size, too small, I knew within just a couple of miles that I had discovered a brand-new love. I LOVED riding my bike ! ( Very soon after that realization, I bought myself a right-sized bike, and we have been together ever since.  )

As the race day drew nearer,and my six-week forced rest ended, I hobbled through short, easy walk/runs, and continued to ride my bike and water jog.  I really wasn’t healed all the way, though. It still hurt like crazy. On race day,  I ran those 13.1 miles and finished with a big smile, but I was in an awful lot of pain.  That was July 29th, 2012.

 I hadn't run more than a few steps (ok, one 5K with my kiddo in November) until just 2 months ago. 

But my recent Saturday run showed me definitively that time away has healed my messed-up feet, ankles, knees and hips, and as long as I take it easy and follow all the rules I’ve now learned about how to do this right, I think I’ll continue to run better and better.  

On Saturday’s run, as I revelled in how much better it is to run pain-free, I was struck by the parallel to another area of my life where I’m inexperienced, did things wrong, and now I'm hurting: relationships.

Yes, I KNOW it’s too soon. I know that by whatever "Rules" are out there on this subject, I probably should not have been dating so soon after Andre's death, but again... I'm breaking rules in my search for my new life. It's been a difficult and very lonely 18 years of being Andre's wife and keeper, and I am longing to finally be loved, and be in love. 

And I know it's too soon.  

I can know that, intellectually, and still not experience that to be true, just like I knew, intellectually, that I needed to be careful about training to run a half-marathon, but it didn’t stop me from doing what I felt somehow compelled to do, and I made some really dumb mistakes that got me hurt.

Feeling like I needed to "sneak" the beginning of my new life, but also feeling a bit defiant of “what everybody will think”, I stuck a toe in the waters of dating, and I met someone pretty special in late November.  

However I was not prepared for how intense things could get, after being so lonely for so long. (Ok, bring out the chorus of "DUH !!!!" )  Starting in January, things started to go badly, get worse from there, and there's just too much pain in that situation for me to keep "running" there.

And as much as we both wish that we could just “cut back the miles a little” or “run a little slower”... Or, in relationship language, be "just friends”, I can’t do that.  There are stress fractures in my soul at the moment, and as long as I keep trying to run in that relationship, I’m just adding deeper pain to my life. 

My pain-free 5.5 miles has helped me realize that only way to someday run pain-free is to stop running completely, in this relationship, to shake hands or hug, and walk away with grace and a smile (even if the tears are flowing). There are a couple of loose ends to wrap up soon, but that's what I know I have to do.

I'm hoping that there’s a bit of life-cross-training of some kind that will put me in touch with that “new love” that I found in riding my bike while race-cross-training.

Or maybe I just have to wear my “boot cast” on my heart and get used to the idea of being alone.

The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews, says, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped-for; the conviction of things not yet seen"  (Hebrews 11, v. 1)

So, while I take the time for my stress-fractured heart to heal, I will continue to lace up my sneakers and put in my careful miles of training toward the big race in June (If you haven't visited my fundraising page for the American Brain Tumor Association and my run in the San Francisco Half Marathon, now would be a good time..click here. ) , and I'll just have to keep trusting in what I do not see yet. 

I'll see you on the running paths and bike trails... I'll be the one who looks like she's running in slow motion, getting passed by the kids on tricycles.

###

And sometimes, I have to admit, I'm not always the "Little Engine That Could"... the "I think I can, I think I can..." girl. Sometimes, I'm more like this one:  

There goes my G- rating for this blog... Some strong language might offend sensitive viewers.  Sorry, y'all. 

My Half Out of the Middle, and other crimes

"So, are you still sleeping on the same side of the bed, or have you moved to the middle?" 

Sometimes, it takes a 20+ year old movie to get me thinking about how I'm living my life right now.

Last Sunday afternoon, right after church, I declared, "I need a nap.", and I went upstairs, shut the door, turned on my laptop and watched,  When Harry Met Sally   for the first time, all the way through, without interruption.  (If you've lived under a rock even longer than I have, and have no idea what this movie is about, click here for a synopsis.)  When Harry and Sally are still in their "friends" stage, while they are each still grieving the break-ups of their relationships with their respective partners, Harry asks Sally, 

"So, are you still sleeping on the same side of the bed, or have you moved to the middle?" 

And Sally says that she's moved to the middle.  Harry agonizes that he's still sleeping on his original side of the bed, and that he feels weird if even his leg moves across the middle line.  

Until very recently, I was just like Harry, sleeping only on "my" side.  In fact, I hadn't even been un-making that side of the bed.  Don't ask me why.  It was just instinctive.  That had been Andre's side of the bed. It never occurred to me to claim it.  

And no, this isn't really a meditation on my bedroom.  As usual, it's another instance of something small, something mundane and concrete that gets me thinking about something bigger.  Interestingly, in my eagerness to re-decorate and change the master bedroom in the days and weeks right after Andre's death, I knew I had to make changes that would interrupt the constant re-runs of the horror movie in my head or I'd never be able to sleep in the room again, but I was also rather worried that somehow, I was making the room "too" mine, doing too many things according to only my tastes, and feeling like I should be deferring to someone, even though I knew that Andre was gone. 

About a week ago, I had a dream that has stayed with me.  Andre was in it, as he sometimes is, and that, in itself, is usually upsetting.  This one, though was memorably upsetting because of what he was doing.  He was, with the help of the husband of one of my dear friends, filling-up my house with junk; Andre's junk, computer parts and bits of household hardware, boxes of old textbooks, childhood tchotckes, car-parts, the very junk that I have spent months clearing out, throwing out, donating, boxing-up, trying to sell-off!  And the other man was helping Andre fill-up my house with this crap by BUYING more of it on the internet and having it shipped to my house.  In this dream, I felt powerless to stop them.  It was just the way it had always been:  it just wasn't my choice about what came in, what was spent, and where the stuff piled up.  

 I'm not an expert when it comes to interpreting dreams, but this one felt like it was sending a clear message:  It's time to stop letting Andre, or my memories of Andre, or any other person, fill up MY house, my heart, the house of my spirit, with unwanted "stuff". 

 Not only am I free to sprawl across any part of my king-sized bed (notice I said "my", not "our") that I want, I am also free to begin choosing what stays and what goes from my life, regardless of what the "rules" used to be.

Recently, I challenged an old rule that went something like this:

All house-fixes related to aesthetics are simply TOO impossible and cannot be accomplished without weeks or months of "thinking about it",multiple discussions of why it just can't be done, and then, perhaps a martyrdom operation in which the original single-item task turns into multiple, complicated processes with 100-year-engineering built in, along with several trips to the hardware store, and possibly one to the emergency room, and no further aesthetic input allowed.

In violation of that rule, one afternoon, I looked at my front entryway, and decided that although I'd been told that it was "impossible" to have a small lamp and a small table in the entryway because we HAD to keep a really ugly 1930's vanity there, AND there was simply NO WAY that an extension cord could be tacked along a baseboard to an outlet on another wall... too complicated, too impossible... it was time to have that entry the way I wanted.

•  one trip to the thrift shop to donate the ugly mirrored vanity, 
• one trip to the hardware store for a couple of needed items, 
• one trip to TJMaxx for a lamp, 
• a little time spent crawling along the baseboard with some cable tacks and double-sided tape... and voila!  rule broken.  No trips to the emergency room.  No martyrdom, and nothing bolted to the wall with 80-lb capacity molly bolts, centered precisely using four kinds of levels... RULE BROKEN

And shortly after that, I decided that I was fed up with having nothing but salvage-area computers with antiquated software that couldn't stream Netflix or use Skype or stream Pandora, so I broke this rule:

Under NO circumstances are new computers to be purchased.  New computers are full of suspicious things like versions of Windows that are younger than our oldest child, and possibly have things like webcams and disc-burners built in.  This can't be good.  Boneyard computers, frankensteined from parts and pieces, and loaded with versions of software that can't be purchased or supported anywhere are the only options. 

You see, in order for me to have been able to watch When Harry Met Sally in the quiet of MY room, it required that I have a new laptop, not one constructed from bits and pieces, not running a bootlegged copy of an out-dated operating system... Yup, I actually bought myself a new computer 2 weeks ago, but it took two weeks to realize why I was feeling haunted by doing so.  I'd broken a rule.  You see how it starts?  I break a rule by buying myself a computer, unassisted by an "expert", I watch a movie I never could have sneaked time for in my old life, I hear a question that gets me thinking, and before you know it, the rules are being broken all over the place, and I'm writing about it to an audience of who knows who.  Who knows where it will stop.  Oh, and I bought the computer with a portion of the proceeds of the sale of one of Andre's guns. (Yet another rule broken.)  How's that for a trade?  A bit of paranoia and death sold-off to a collector in Tennessee, in exchange for a bit of life and laughter that I purchased for myself.

The dream (well, waking it up from it, anyway), my realization that I could indeed  "take my half out of the middle" of my king-sized bed, my adventures in decorating, and my heedless foray into the trackless jungles of Windows 8 are all wobbly-kneed moments of realizing over and over, and sometimes with tears, that I am freer than I realize.

And I am definitely wobbly: just like the day after Andre's memorial service when I removed my wedding rings, just like the day I spent with a dear friend, cleaning out Andre's clothes closet and emptying his dresser.  I'm free, but I'm unused to being this free, and it's a little scary and a little lonely.  There are times when I am holding in one hand the memory of how awful it was to live in the prison that was my marriage, and weighing it against strange comfort of the predictable, if confining and painful security of my previous life.  It's in those moments, I feel like that character from another movie, The Shawshank Redemption, the character who simply can't handle freedom after being in prison for so long, and eventually returns. I think there have been some times lately when I've wished for a way to return.  

I won't return, though, not to that life, and I know that eventually I will learn to live here on the outside, and learn to revel in my freedom.

For now, I'll start with moving ALL the pillow shams, and turning down the WHOLE edge of the covers, and climbing into the middle of my king-sized bed.

To sleep, perchance to dream... I'm hoping the dreams get better from here.

Raise the seat. Aim for a central point just ahead of you.

I learned something recently from a guy I know.

Wait... that didn't sound quite right, did it?  

Really, this is not a blog entry about that.  

But I did momentarily capture the attention of your inner 5-year -old, didn't I?  (Or, for some folks, their inner 18-year-old... ) 

(Now kindly re-direct your inner kindergartener to something more appropriate, while consoling your inner teenager, that there will be some mention of long legs coming up... oh, and a brief bondage joke.  You have been warned. ) 

Ahem... back to those life lessons. 

I'm referring, of course, to what I have learned recently about riding my bike.  And while I was riding my bike today, I got to thinking about how those lessons could be applied in the rest of my life.  

Lesson 1- Raise the seat

Ok, this one I did NOT learn from a guy, (aren't you relieved?)  but it is something I discovered today on my ride.  I'm 5'10" and most of my height is in my legs.  I was the kid with the high-waters throughout most of my childhood.  And now I refer to my summer collection of "cropped pants" when I can't find the extra-long jeans for my 36-inch inseam. After struggling along with a much-too-short bike for a couple of years, I'd given myself the gift of a right-sized bike last Spring, when I needed to cross-train for my first half-marathon.  But I had never considered whether the height of the seat was properly adjusted to give me enough power in each pedal stroke.  Today, it suddenly occurred to me to raise the seat a couple of inches, and... voila !  More power ! 

I'm thinking that there's a metaphor I need to consider: when I'm feeling like I'm just not making any headway, I need to consider extending myself a bit more, stretching a little beyond my current comfort zone, if I want to experience my full power.  

Lesson 2: Aim for a central point just ahead of you.

This lesson was the one that actually got me thinking about how what I learn on my bike applies to my life.  And it's the one I learned from a guy. :-) 

I had a conversation, a couple of weeks ago, with a friend who is a competitive cyclist, and a pretty helpful guy when it comes to advice.  We were talking about that wobbly feeling that you get when you have to somehow thread yourself and the bike through a narrow place on a ride: gates, a tight overtake-and-pass, or riding in a group. Take a look at the photo above and notice those poles at the end of the crosswalk.  All along my ride on the bike trails around here, I have to ride through those gateways.  Sure, they don't look all that narrow, until, as a newbie cyclist, I try to ride through one, and I find myself feeling wobbly and having to slow way down, which makes me even more wobbly, which can lead to crashing into one of the poles.  They are a kind of Island of the Sirens for a casual cyclist like me: the poles have a kind of magnetic pull, and a swerve to either side can bring me to destruction, or at least bruises and embarrassment.  

And my friend's advice was to aim for a central point, ahead of you, just beyond the narrow place.  I tried it today for the first time, during my 22-mile ride along the Contra Costa Canal Trail.

And it worked !  As I approached the gateway, I chose a specific leaf, pebble, or even a dark spot on the pavement, a few feet past the gateway, and I maintained speed and sailed right through, again and again, gate after gate.  It didn't work as well when I just told myself to "look past the gate".  It seemed like I needed a specific, visible point to aim for.

In my life these days, my own magnetic, crash-inducing, poles-on -the-trail Sirens are guilt, grief, self-doubt, and a kind of paralyzing depression that makes me a lousy mom and a real drag as a friend.  Each time I get "ambushed" either by a holiday, or some kind of family milestone, or something that reminds me of the difference between my life now and where I wish it was, I find myself wobbling dangerously close to these monsters.  (If you've forgotten the story of Odysseus and the Sirens since your junior high school English class, click on the blue text, and you can grab a quick About.com fix.)

So... what to do?  In the story, Odysseus had his crew put wax in their ears and then lash him to the mast while they sailed past the rock where the Sirens were.  But you know, if I'm going to have a bunch of sailors tie me up, it had better be for something way, way more fun than simply ignoring me while we sail past some old rock.  (Of course, I'm kidding... my mom reads this blog...and so do my pastors.) 

But I CAN "aim for a central point" ahead of me. 

If an emotional "narrow gate" on the calendar is looming, and I feel myself getting wobbly, and I'm pulled toward a crash, I can stay aware of those "poles", but keep moving toward a specific, visible point, just beyond that gate.  I have a feeling that the whole "just think of your future" thing isn't going to work.  It's too vague, and frankly, there are too many future scenarios that are not at all cheery, if my mind chooses to go that way.  Instead, I need to identify the possible upcoming narrow spots, and then find or plan a specific event, preferably something involving doing for others, extending myself (see Lesson #1), that will occur just past the opening of the narrow place I have to travel through.   

March... no problems that I see...April / Easter... I think that one's pretty well covered.  A celebration of the victory of life over death, of resurrection, renewal, redemption... I think that one won't involve too much Andre-loaded wobbling. 

May... a bit more challenging.  That one is going to require some spotting of specific pebbles on the pavement.  I've got a birthday in the month, and then there's what would have been our 19th wedding anniversary, a week later, on the 28th.  I've got a bit of time to spot those pebbles, I guess.  One possible "pebble"  might be my half-marathon run with the American Brain Tumor Team Breakthrough, on June 16.  (If you click on the blue text, it will take you right to my fundraising page.  How's that for shameless self-promotion?  It's for a good cause, though.)

June...maybe I'll still be running off the high of the half marathon for part of the month, but I'll need a pebble to steer for as I approach my eldest son's birthday on the 25th.  

July brings us to the one-year mark, and it might take more than steering toward a pebble to keep me from wobbling.  But that's where my amazing friends come in.  Somehow, I'll get through it... or maybe somebody will round up a crew of sailors to do that lashing-to-the-mast thing...No, wait...I didn't say that, did I?  (No worries, Mom, I really am kidding...) 

Hebrews 12:1-2 
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, ² fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.

I'm thinking that will make a pretty good-sized pebble, in addition to any of the other ones I might need to line up.  

Roses and Ashes

When I was an unathletic, chubby, awkward 3rd grader, there was only one boy in my class who DIDN'T call me fat, didn't try to trip me in the hallways, and even laughed with me over things that we both found funny.  So, when Valentine's Day that year came around, and we all put our little hand-addressed Valentines in the pink and red paper-covered distribution box in Mrs. Dolcetti's classroom, the only boy who got a Valentine from me was Donnie S.  I found out, years later, that the gesture was a bright spot for a lonely little boy who was going through a rough patch himself at the time.

Years later, when we bumped into each other at a summer resort where I was working, between sophomore and junior years of college, Don (no longer "Donnie") greeted me with "Val!! You were the only person who sent me a Valentine when we were in 3rd grade!  I'll never forget that."  Many years after that, at our 30th high school class reunion, my 3rd-grade buddy reminded me, yet again, of that Valentine's Day so long ago.  Funny how some gestures take on a life of their own.

Over the years, I've found myself desperately wishing that someone special would, just once, make a little effort, with no hinting from me, and surprise me with a rose, or a poem, or a card... something a little romantic, something that showed a little thought for me.

And as I've gotten to know the men in my life: a couple of boyfriends and then my husband, I've realized that I need to have some compassion for the way guys feel this time of year.  I've come to understand that Valentine's Day, in that Hallmark card/Kay Jewelers/1-800-Flowers frame is a pretty intimidating thing for them: high expectations, unfamiliar "stuff", and the looming possibility of screwing it up.

Of course, it's not the "stuff" that I was wishing for, it was that sense of being thought of, valued, loved.

During my years with Andre, I learned to just roll with whatever happened or didn't happen that day.

There were many "oops, I forgot" years, a few last-minute dashes to the store at 10 p.m on the 14th, and one year when I was presented with an Alan Jackson CD....yup.  And then there's the story that's still told among the sales staff at a local lingerie boutique.  It seems that one February, Andre decided that I needed a few lacy nothings and went into Sarah's Bare Necessities to find them.  He told the sales clerk my size and had her pick out a few things to show him on the hangers.   He then took the items one by one, and threw them on the floor, nodding approvingly.  When the woman demanded to know what he was doing, he reportedly grinned his rascally grin and quipped,  "Oh, I just want to know what it's going to look like once I get it home."   To his credit, it does reflect some degree of thought and effort.  It was one of the better years.  Another year, it was clear that his wait-til-the-last-minute strategy made the search for "just the right card" a little challenging.  I got a card that year from the Hispanic collection, entirely in Spanish.  And it was actually a pretty romantic card.  My Spanish is pretty good.  Since Andre's command of the language began and ended with the Taco Bell menu , I don't think he chose the card for its message, but for the fact that it had what appeared to be sentences of some kind of text, some pictures of roses, and a decided lack of Tweety Bird or Power Rangers on it. (See above, re: "possibility of screwing up")  Again, looking back, I'd give him points for at least trying.

And today, it's the 13th of the month (Andre died on July 13), and tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and I'm feeling a little fragile.  If there ever were a day to make sure that there's kleenex around every corner, it's been today.  There won't be any romantic gestures for me tomorrow, or even any failed attempts at one.  I could give in to feeling sorry for myself.  In fact, there have been moments all day when I have done just that.  (Investment tip: Kleenex Corporation is a buy and hold stock for a while.)

But today is also Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a season of reflection and repentance that leads up to Easter.  This evening, I'm wearing on my forehead a reminder of a gesture of love that was planned before I was even a twinkle in my parent's eyes.  Tonight, I participated in a service that reminds us that the love of God begins with a declaration that we are beloved creations, created in the image of our creator, declared, "very good" ... and that with our free will, we have the capability, indeed the propensity to screw up, AND that our screw-ups are forgiven: now, tomorrow, next year, and on and on forever.

Tonight's service included the writing of short anonymous confessions on little pieces of paper and tucking them into the "stones" of a replica of the Wailing Wall (I love the creative worship team at my church--never the same thing twice)  and the imposition of ashes --the burned and ground-up remains of last Palm Sunday's palm branches--on our foreheads, in the shape of a cross, a reminder of the length to which God goes to prove how loved we are.  As I struggle with my inevitable guilt--over Andre's death, over feeling relieved that the nightmare of life with him is done, guilt over moving on, guilt over not being the 100% wonderful mom I should be... it's a great relief to be given time to write down the worst of it, fold it up on a little slip of paper, and let go of it, and to do so in the community of people who have supported me every step of this journey, people who translate God's love into gestures of love that are far too real, far too thoughtful to have ever come from a card store or a florist stand.

In a frame that is way, way bigger than Hallmark, Kay Jewelers, or 1-800-flowers could ever be, I think I've received my love note for this year.  It's just not the red/pink/sparkly one I might have been wishing for.  But, once I dry my eyes, re-apply the mascara, and get over my self-pitying self, it really is way more than enough.

Oh, and I actually did get surprised with a rose today.

Even though I pruned my rose bushes mercilessly in preparation for the winter, months ago, I guess Somebody  knew I'd need one rose, right about now.  I found this one on the bush this morning, and brought it inside before the cold air at night zaps it.

Yup, I think I'll get through the day ok.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.    John 13:34