Are We There Yet?

This morning I'm finishing up laundry, cleaning out my car, packing the last of the last minute - oh, yes, I'd like to have that just in case ... items.  The kids are excited, I'm excited.  Its going to be a good week.  I have my camera, I have my notebook, I'm ready.  The kids have their pillows, crayons, books, hot wheels, YuGiOh cards, K'nex, two stuffed monkeys and a bag of snacks - they're ready, too.  Tucker thought there were more things he should pack, but unfortunately, he had to break it off to go to school.  I'm not sure that there's going to be room for boys in that back seat, but they'll work it out. 

Hugs to you all.   I will check in as I can. 

 Terri  

Spring Fever

You know how it is that every Spring the birds migrate?  Me toooooooo.  I know that it's traditional to clean your house in Springtime, but I'd much rather leave the house and travel across the country dragging my kids to educational exhibits and keeping my friends up late. 

Do you know what's bad about losing enough weight that last year's bathing suit doesn't support your boobs anymore?      Absolutely nothing!    

I'm leaving tomorrow for the first of two "rest and relax" trips I'll be taking this Spring.  Wanna hear about it?  When the bell rings at East Washington Elementary School tomorrow afternoon, Momi will be in the parking lot with suitcases packed and loaded.  The kids and I are hitting the road.  Because of our desire for Tim to have the most time possible with the kids, after the divorce he gets the boys for all their school breaks.  That doesn't give him equal time with them, but it does give him enough time that we are hoping it will enable them to maintain a solid relationship.  But that being the case, I won't have the opportunity for much traveling with my boys.  We've agreed that this Spring Break, I will take them for a real vacation with Mom. 

We are headed to Woodbridge, Virginia via Athens, Ohio.  You know about Athens, Ohio right?  Home to the two cutest little blonde girls that I've ever met.  My boys already think of girls as mysterious creatures to be carefully observed for proof that they are from some other planet.  The guys won't stand a chance in the presence of these charmers.  We are planning to let the kids swim in the hotel pool (this is why I dragged out my swimsuit this morning and determined that yes - I need a new one), we're going to explore woods and caves, and see the goats at Faith's place. 

On Sunday, we will have a leisurely morning (this is vacation, and although MY habit is to get up before dawn to hit the road, my boys aren't so crazy about that plan.)  Plus I plan to have breakfast with Faith's family and it would just be rude to insist that they rise at 4 am.  Then we are making the drive to Virginia.  I have the promise in hand (this is a promise that I WANTED to hear) that I will be shown a better path than the one I took last Fall.  Not that there's anything wrong with the glorious vista of West Virginia, unless you prefer to travel faster than 20 miles an hour across the ENTIRE state.  Can you tell I'm excited?  That makes three times in one paragraph that I've felt compelled to shout. 

So in Virginia, we'll be just outside Washington DC at my friend Mary's house.  I love to visit Mary.  Okay, in truth, I love to visit all my friends, but let me tell you what's special about Mary.  She gives me laziness lessons.  She insists that I relax, I'm not allowed to worry, fret or clean anything unless I really really really want to.  She treats me like royalty the whole time I'm there.  And we talk.  We talk about writing, about kids and family, about girl stuff (although I have yet to talk her into painting each other's toenails.)  We stay up late and watch movies that I haven't seen.  It's fabulous.  Plus she has this really cool map of Washington DC that enables us to hop on the metro and find our way to whatever attraction we've targeted without looking TOO much like tourists.  (Ooops, I'm shouting again.) 

My kids' teachers have expressed their enthusiasm for having the boys bring back artifacts of the trip.  Pamphlets from the Lincoln Memorial, diamonds from the Smithsonian, you know, whatever Tucker picks up will be fine ....

Oh, I'm ready for this trip. 

We'll get back to Indiana next Saturday night.  Just in time for me to start doing laundry and packing for another trip.  See I discovered that Ms Daffodilious (being a teacher) also has Spring Break.  Only as it fell, her break was at a different time than my sons' school break.  So WAY last Fall (I give up, I can not keep my fingers under control here.)  We made these plans that the two of us would head out for a week on the road together.  Oh, the giggles, oh the late night talks, Oh, the SHOES we have to pack.  I'm leaving for my second trip on Friday April 2. 

Oh, I am REALLY ready for this trip. 

Going through the process of this separation, I have been very careful to monitor the boys' feelings and talk with them about what's going on.  I've taken them to visit a counselor, we've processed, and I've made sure that as much as I could, I've minimized the trauma this is causing them.  Yes, I know it's still unpleasant for them.  But I believe they are coming though this with the sense that our family will be different, but they aren't being abandoned.  They still have a family.  They have a Mom AND a Dad who love them and are commited to them. 

I've been careful to be as sensitive as possible to Tim's feelings.  Through the past five months, we've been able to connect on a new level as friends and I have a degree of hope that I would never have imagined when all this started.  I am hopeful that we are going to continue to be friends and to keep that vow to respect and support each other. 

You know what?  My life is being turned in forty new directions too.  And one thing I haven't done is take time to be gentle with myself.  I've put myself under a lot of pressure to make significant life decisions one after another.  I've been continuing my work in my home in a way that at times is just surreal.  We come home from the attorney's office, and I make dinner just like always.  I don't want to suggest that I think I should have done it any other way.  I think that the result of the way we've handled it is positive enough to have justified far more sacrifice on all our parts if such had been necessary to achieve it.  But the way that we've handled it has meant that some things have gone on the back burner.  And like I said earlier, I haven't taken time to be gentle with me. 

The trip in April is a gift my friends are giving me.  If I listed for you the many kindnesses I've received that are making this time possible, well, I don't think I could make that list without crying (my eyes are damp now) and I'm terribly afraid that I would leave someone out.  I'm not going away to hide and cry by myself.  Thanks to the generosity and support of people who love me, I get a whole week to leave behind the craziness of my current situation and relax in the presence of someone I love, who will take care of me, and make sure that I have a fantastic week.  Do you see why it is that I constantly write here that I have the best friends in the world?  I love you all.  Thank you. 

Luck of the Irish to Ye!

If I weren't sure that I would screw up the beautiful job that Tina did designing my page, I'd have had everything green for today.  I didn't know much about St. Patrick until just a few years ago.  My awareness of St. Patrick's day was more about Irish pride and green beer than the man for whom the celebration is named.  I was surprised that we actually know quite a bit about him. 

I'll go off the top of my head, you can correct me if I get these details wrong.  Patrick was the spoiled child of a wealthy family until sometime late in his teens when he was taken from his home in a midnight raid.  Transported to Ireland, he was sold into slavery and found himself living in extremely harsh and lonely conditions.  Several years later, he escaped and made his way back to his home, but sometime during all his sufferings and trials, he developed a heart of compassion for the people of Ireland.  He chose to go back.  He spent the rest of his life bringing the message of Christianity to Ireland and he articulated theology that in some circles is still on the cutting edge of understanding.  He was the first theologian to develop the anti-slavery doctrine that the rest of the Church only came around to some 1500 years later.  He was respectful of women and the Irish Church included women in ministry for hundreds of years until a papal decree brought an end to that practice.  We have writings attributed to Patrick which are probably not original documents, but are considered to be some of the most historically reliable documents of the era.  He was a remarkable man. 

In the first volume of his Hinges of History series, Thomas Cahill contrasts Patrick with the great pillar of the church St Augustine of Hippo.  He titled the book "How the Irish Saved Civilization" - it might have been more appropriately titled "How the Irish Saved Christianity."  It's an interesting look into the life of a fascinating man, and it poses questions about how history might have been different if the Church had continued to follow Patrick's lead instead of lining up in the track laid down by Augustine. 

*****

In yesterday's comment section, Lettersat3am asked: Do those promises include the big one: marriage?

She excused me from answering that question, but I will admit that it was on my mind even before she posed it.  I titled yesterday's blog Promises, Promises, this is the second time I've used that title.  The first blog I wrote under that heading contained the words of the vows that Tim and I spoke at our wedding.  I've thought a LOT about the promises we made that day and about the outcome fifteen years down the road. 

We had a rather unusual ritual at our ceremony.  Instead of the "exchange" with each of us speaking one set of vows.  Tim spoke vows to me.  Then at the beginning of my part I first accepted his vow, then spoke my own.  Finally, he responded by saying that he accepted my vow.  We've talked some about the exact words we spoke, and about whether we kept the vows we made.

Tim's vow to me was to value none above me, to allow nothing to come between us, and to give me his loyalty and his love.

My vow was to offer myself completely to him, to stand with him and respect him, to care for and console him, to give him my love and faithfulness. 

If I had said it, I think that it would sound as though I considered myself to have been better than I probably was.  But I will tell you that in one of the conversations that brought me to tears over the past several months, Tim and I discussed these vows.  He said to me that even now with all that has happened and knowing that we are on the verge of separation, that something he admired in me, was that he felt like I have never wavered from keeping my vow.  This came at the end of several difficult weeks between us.  He told me that he had really wanted to find a way to blame me, to feel angry with me.  He admitted that part of the reason he wanted to do that was to avoid facing his own responsibility.  But the more honestly he looked at the situation, the less he was able to do that.  It was the foundation of our beginning to really be friends.  

Separating is hard.  From the time that we agreed that we would be healthier people apart from each other, we have worked very hard to find a foundation that will support our relationship from now on.  Regardless of our direct and legal connection to each other, we are now and will always be the parents of these two children.  For that alone, we have not only the option but the obligation to do everything in our power to separate as friends.  Part of building a friendship has been to not make promises.  We are both sceptical of promises right now, and we have focused hard on letting yes be yes and no be no.  Its working. 

We took a final vow in our wedding ceremony, a joint vow that we spoke together with joined hands.  We promise to honor, protect, and support each other regardless of the circumstances of life.  So how strange is this?  We are changing our circumstances, but we are upholding that vow. 

Promises, Promises

The older I get the more I dislike promises.  It's always been a point of wisdom to let yes be yes and no be no, but it has become much much more than it used to be.  Now, when someone makes me a promise, my first reaction is suspicion.  I wonder why they feel that they would need to promise anything?  If you intend to do something, just do it, don't promise me that you will do it. 

See here's my thinking, making me a promise elicits from me a relationship "credit" before you've earned it.  (Not that my relationships are about keeping score, but bear with me in this metaphor.)  If I believe your promise then I'm going to be acting toward you as though you've already completed whatever it is that you've promised to do.  If for any reason you aren't able to follow through on that promise, your fault, my fault, nobody's fault - we're suddenly in the position of having to renegotiate our relationship because it's been built on something less than truth and reality.

I'm equally unhappy when I find myself in the position of making a promise.  I made some promises to a friend several months back.  My follow-through on those promises has been less than stellar.  Partly that's because I didn't realize when I made those promises that I was commiting to something far beyond my present knowledge and capacity for performing under the best of conditions.  But add in the issues of parenting and going through the legal and personal trauma of a divorce and I might as well have just never even tried to get done the things I said I would do.  I've been slow, inconsistent, and my work hasn't been of the quality I would like to see as my standard. 

Now my friend is rightly upset with me because when I made those promises, I was extended the relationship credit that comes with producing specific results.  It doesn't matter that my intentions were good.  (Still are)  What matters is that I said I would do it, and I haven't. 

In spite of the time stamp you may notice on this blog, I'm not sleep deprived these days.  In fact, my body seems to be in "catch-up mode".  I lay down with Tucker almost five hours ago.  We read his bedtime story, and before I knew it we were both sleeping.  So I've already had more than a half night of rest, and I'm on my way back to bed now to get that second half. 

I hope that your dreams are full of inspiration and that your rest is peaceful and long.  See you tomorrow. 

Tucker Tales

Everyone has their favorite Tucker tale, even Tucker.  Two summers ago, I had this idea that I would build a little goldfish pond.  The rocks I hauled up from all over the property and which you see around it all have fossils embedded in them.  The kids and I have studied them, ooooohed and aaaaaaahed over the preserved leaves.  We carefully chose two big fat goldfish who lived happily in our little pond for almost a week.  Then one Saturday afternoon, Tucker came in the house to tell me ... "Mom, I gave the fish a bath."  Yes, those ARE bubbles.  He dumped most of a bottle of my favorite Bath and Body Works Cucumber/Melon bubble bath into the pond. 

Solidarity

I've been thinking a lot about the bombing in Madrid.  So many of those scenes take me back to the feelings and thoughts I had after 9/11.  I've heard radio and television commentators making links between the Madrid atrocity and what we experienced here.  They pointed out that it was 911 days from September 11, 2001 to March 11, 2004. 

I have grieved along with the survivors and the families of the victims in Madrid in the same way that I grieved for the pain of the 9/11 victims.  I find them haunting my dreams and I wake with tears on my face.

I made the comment to a friend that we live in a horrible world when human life has no more value than to be used as political speech.  My friend considered that and answered, no and yes.  The world we live in isn't horrible, it's wonderful.  With a moment to reflect on that, I can agree.  The world is full of breathtakingly beautiful vistas.  I've been touched to my core by open-hearted love and support from friends and acts of unbelievable kindness by strangers.  I've given birth and I know the miracle of seeing a tiny body take it's first breath.  The world is a wonderful place.

It would be easy in the face of the acts of terrorism I see on television, and shamefully thank God that it wasn't me, wasn't my children, to create a division in my mind between the us who would never do such things and the them who did.  But I wonder even as I think these thoughts whether such a division falsely separates me from the shadow side of what it means to be a human.

In this wonderful world, people have a tendency to devalue human life.  Devaluing takes place every time we speak harshly to our child, take advantage of our neighbor or lie to avoid the consequences of truth.  We don't judge ourselves so harshly, we say, "Well, at least I didn't ..." but we did.  Anytime we refuse to see the person before us with eyes of honest seeing, we devalue him.  There is a sense in which we kill the people around us everyday by refusing to allow them to be who they really are, to be real in our eyes.  No, I don't plant bombs.  But I've been a child on the receiving end of verbal abuse and I believe I'm not too far out on a limb when I say that abuse kills, it wounds and kills the spirit of a human who is changed, has a part of his life potential lost.  And yet, I hear harsh words come from my own mouth as though I have no memory of that pain.

I find when I search my heart that I have solidarity with those who mourn because my experience gives me empathy and insight into their suffering.  I also find and uncomfortable solidarity with those who destroy because I have been destructive.  I don't know, I think it's too early to know who was responsible for Thursday's attack.  I've been reminded of nothing so much as the Oklahoma City bombing and how in the first hours after that attack the focus was on "foreign terrorists" only it turned out to be someone who looked like he could have been any American kid.

As we wait to learn what the investigation uncovers, I hope that we will be slow to judge groups of people based on the actions of a few.  I want to remember that there is no "us" and "them", there's just a painful continuum on which we live and we could all say of those who commit such acts, "There but for the grace of God, go I."

*****

In my meditation over the past several days, searching for understanding and hope I have been reminded of the work of another poet.  The story of Basque poet, Manuel de Unamuno is worth repeating before I share his poem.  In 1936 he was an elderly professor at the University of Salamanca.  Known for his outspoken criticism of Franco and the fascist cause, he found himself staring at the fascist General Milan-Astray over the barrel of a gun.  Unamuno said to him, "At times to be silent is to lie.   You will win because you have enough brute force.  But you will not convince.  For to convince you need to persuade.  And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: reason and right."  The general shouted, "Death to intelligence!  Long live death!" and drove the ailing poet out of the university.

Within a week, Unamuno suffered a heart attack and died.  Yet almost 70 years later, he and his words are still remembered in Spain (and obviously elsewhere because I have them here on my desk.)  Except for his association with Unamuno's story, the name of the general has long since fallen into obscurity.  It is my hope that in this wonderful world, compassion and joy, sacrifice and solidarity will slways outlive anger, hate, and destruction.  In the face of his own trouble and grief, Unamuno wrote the following poem:

Throw Yourself Like Seed

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life
is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing
which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your
own field,
don't turn your face for that would be to turn it
to death,
and to not let the past weigh your motion.

Leave what's alive in the furrow, what's dead
in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group
of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to
gather yourself.

Manuel de Unamuno

* Addendum - after one of the comments left earlier, I would like to make one thing perfectly clear.  When I speak of solidarity with those who have committed an atrocity like this bombing, I am not in any way suggesting that I approve or voluntarily align myself with the perpetrators of the act.  I am saying that I feel a unity with these people because when I look into my own heart, I recognize the same seeds of inhumanity that taken to their logical end would have me commiting acts that abuse and dehumanize others.  I can't imagine myself ever making or planting a bomb, but that doesn't mean that I can say I have no part of that evil in my heart.  It isn't comfortable to recognize that I have the same feelings or predisposition to devalue others for my own ends.  It is the truth. 

Waxing Poetical

Okay, I've been in a poetical kind of mood this week.  Oh yeah!  It can happen to the best of us.  Just because you think that you aren't a poet, that you have no rhythm, doesn't make you safe.  One day, someone will say to you, "That's a very poetic way of seeing things" and all of a sudden you're trapped.  You start looking at things sideways and seeing them from an angle that requires oblique words.  I love that sensation of approaching life from the sideways angle, you see so much that you miss when you tackle it head-on.  It's dawning on me now that maybe this is the I'm in my 40s version of "in the Spring a young man's fancy ..."  I'm not a young man, but I can smell Spring in the damp earth so ripe that it can't contain the fragrance of quickening.  I see it in the fat fronds among Daffodil greens threatening to burst open with the first warm day.  And I hear it in verses whispering on the wind.  There's poetry in this season of my year, this season of my life.

With such a wild flood of imagery and meaning in my mind, I turn to my favorites for structure, anchor and form.  Not that they are all structured rhymers by any means.  Do you have a favorite poet?  I have a shelf dedicated to the voices I listen to over and over.  e. e. cummings, Erica Jong, Rumi, and W B Yeats speak truths that I absorb only a little at a time.  It takes repeated exposure for me to begin to think maybe I understand a little of their depths. 

This afternoon, I was reading Yeats' The Wind Among the Reeds.  My all time favorite Yeats poem is contained in that volume, but it isn't the one I stopped on today.

To My Heart Bidding It Have No Fear

Be you still, be you still, trembling heart
Remember the wisdom out of the old days:
   Him who trembles before the flame and the flood,
   And the winds that blow through the starry ways
   Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood
   Cover and hide for he has no part
   With the proud, majestical multitude.

So many many things that poem could mean to me at different times.  Today, it told me that on the other side of fear, is proud majesty, and I'm just.this.close to tasting what that's like. 

Men - Even Little Ones ...

That title comes from a comment left on my previous blog.  I loved it, and it reminded me of a poem by Erica Jong.  So I'm posting that poem for you in hopes that you will enjoy it.  I know that it's wrong to post only a part of a poem, so I'm posting the whole thing, but I'll tell you that the particular lines that bring me back to this one are:

Hate generalizes
love is particular. 

The Truce Between the Sexes

For a long time unhappy
with my man,
I blamed men,
blamed marriage, blamed
the whole bleeding world,
Because I could not lie in bed with him
without lying to him
or else to myself,
& lying to myself
became increasingly hard
as my poems
struck rock.

My life and poems lived apart;
I had to marry them
& marrying them
meant divorcing him,
divorcing the lie.

Now I lie in bed
with my poems on the sheets
& a man I love sleeping or reading
at my side.

Because I love him,
I do not think of him
as "Men,"
but as my friend. 
Hate generalizes,
love is particular.

He is not Men, man, male --
all those maddening m's
muttering like machine-gun spittle,
but only a person like me,
dreaming, vulnerable, scared,
his dreams
opening into rooms
where the chairs
are wishes you can sit on
& the rugs are wonderful
with oriental birds.

The first month we lived together
I was mad with joy,
thinking that a person with a penis
could dream, tell jokes, even cry.
Now I find it usual,
& when other women sputter
of their rage,
I look at them blankly,
half-comprehending
those poor medieval creatures
from a dark, dark age.

I wonder about myself.
Was I always so fickle?
Must politics always be personal?
If I struck oil,
would I crusade
for depletion allowances?

Erica, Erica
you are hard on yourself.
Lie back & enjoy the cease-fire.
Trouble will come again.
Sex will grow horns & warts.
The white sheets of this bed
will be splattered with blood.
Just wait.

But I don't believe it.
There will be trouble enough,
but a different sort.

Tucker's Turn

It's Tucker's turn to have a bad day.  He started complaining of tooth pain so I checked his mouth and it looks like he may have lost a filling.  This puts him in a quandry, bear the pain or submit to the hated visit to the Dentist.  It's a testament to just how uncomfortable he is that he was happy I could get him an appointment for this morning.  I'm scrambling around now trying to make sure both kids are dressed and ready.  I was helping Michael look for his belt and noticed that Tucker was running around in the underpants with the red ants on them ... again.  I stopped him.  "How many days have you been wearing those underpants?"

He thought long and hard.  "I think after three, you just say many." 

Lucky

The car turns round the entrance ramp
the phrase turns round my mind
"Lucky as a four leaf clover"
inside we sit, the four of us
each involved with our private thoughts
music, games, sounds through four
pairs of headphones that push our
own worlds in on us and keep the
others out, we barely touch
that was last November.

Now we pack up the furniture,
the dishes, the books, the towels,
some to his place, some to mine
and our friends say, "You're lucky ..."
because we don't have angry fights
we don't have bitter words, we smile
and say, "Here, let me help you ..."
but clipping that fragile connecting thread
put tears on the face of our kids,
lucky, as a four leaf clover pulled apart.

Terri Verrette, March 2004

Becoming separated - divorced, there are moments that stand out.  Today, we took our kids to Louisville; it was their first opportunity to see their Dad's new apartment.  He has a nice place.  Michael thought the pool was a little small, Tucker made sure he said again that he'll visit Dad, but he isn't going to stay with Dad.  At Garden Ridge we found a print for the wall, and at Ashley Furniture we found a dining table, well made. 

My sister says that it's the "firsts" that are hard.  The first night you sleep alone, the first day you begin the move, the first time you do any of the things you used to do together all by yourself.  

The moment that stands out to me as the hardest I've lived so far was when I held the pen to sign the documents with the name I took fifteen years ago.  That seemed so wrong.  Verrette and Verrette.  It should have been some other name.  We signed separate names on our marriage license, Verrette and Chenault, but the same name on our divorce.  Two separate people got married, but one single family got divorced? 

Michael is sick tonight.  He's been saying for a couple days that he didn't feel well, tonight, he started throwing up.  Like a well-adjusted kid, his first sentence after getting sick was, "This means I don't have to go to school tomorrow, right?"  So I'm sitting up with my sick child, washing his face, holding his hand, and feeling a bit sick myself.  I always feel sick when the kids get sick, sympathy pains, I guess.