Self-Portrait

Perhaps nothing has ever represented me more:

1. Intense  I'm all or none. In or out. Saturated or vacant. Perhaps I need an extended stay in the doldrums of Middletown.

2. Dark  I love clouds and stormy palls over sunshine. I'm still a happy person. I consider myself to have some sort of reverse seasonal disorder. (How dark and glossy the wrapper looks in this photo! Shinier than Darth Vader's helmet!)

3. Midnight  When I get most everything accomplished. Morning people: bring it on. I accomplish as much as you do, I just do it at night. I have asked Greg multiple times to pull the furniture away from the walls at approximately 11 pm so that I could begin painting.

4. Reverie  I am always thinking. Always. Can't turn it off. "Reverie" is a Debussy word. It's what you're supposed to have when you hear his music. The only Debussy I can still play is "La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin."

5. 86  An obvious reference to me crossing things off of my precious lists. Or to throwing out the unnecessary. 86'd that item on my list. 86'd those jeans that I always felt ugly in. 86'd that bad habit.

6. All Natural  Yes I am, unless you count the concealing properties of mineral make-up.

Willow

I wish the people I love would stop leaving me.

Someone I hardly know told me, "It's easier to leave than to be left behind." True statement.

This past year has wrought too much change for me. People I love have left, moved out, moved away, moved on, moved up. The status quo I loved is gone.

This past year hasn't wrought enough change for me. Things I want still aren't here.

I can't keep rolling with the punches (if I've rolled at all). How many times can I alter my norm? Being flexible is not my strength, and the more I've thought about it I've realized flexibility is an extension of patience.

Everything I carefully crafted, cultivated and collected in my twenties is now diffusing. I can't blame them for leaving. They have to follow their own roads. I'm jealous of their new chapters.

"For the rest of your life you will see relationships split open and fall away, like when drought pulls the ground away from a fencepost, like when a wound opens. It's a hard thing to understand, this kind of loss where people don't really go anywhere."

My friends haven't gone anywhere. I will just have to make more of an effort to bridge the gap so I can enjoy the comfort of laughter, hugs, uncensored banter, lemon bars, salted chocolate and aid they offer me. I am not the Lone Fencepost.

Be made to bend. The line from a hymn I wrote down months ago. This too shall pass if I can just remain flexible.

Storms and wind break stoic oaks but bendy willows survive. I'm already built like a willow. I might as well act like one.

*Quote is an excerpt from an essay by Ashley Warlick

Love ≠ Reciprocation

I go to the overpriced, organic grocery store Good Earth solely to buy Winder Dairy milk, vital wheat gluten, granulated lecithin and Tillamook Extra Sharp Cheddar. Last month I went right at dinnertime, so I also bought a Chocolove Sea Salt & Almond dark chocolate bar. Fireworks in my mouth. Worth the impulse.

The wonderful thing about Chocolove chocolate bars is that the inside of each wrapper is printed with a love poem (and the chocolate sections are stamped with a heart...cuteness). My printed poem was the sonnet from Romeo and Juliet that begins "A thousand times good-night!". I figured that was the poem for Sea Salt & Almond Chocolove, so you can imagine my delight when I bought a second bar and the poem was "Meeting at Night" by Robert Browning. Now I have to buy Chocolove bars until I get a repeat because it will bother me to no end wondering how many love poems are out there.

Romeo and Juliet. Star-crossed lovers. "Star-crossed" is code for "sap-sucking idiots" in my world. If you give Melissa a Romeo her wildest dreams would be surpassed for two weeks. Then she'd start to get suffocated. Then she'd get annoyed with the sycophancy. Then she'd withdraw and become a hermit. Hermits are grouchy. Melissa would be grouchy and start kicking puppies. See? No Romeos for me.

These candy bars got me thinking about love. And let me tell you, love does not equal reciprocation.

The greatest pitfall to my happiness has been expecting reciprocation. I made you an apple pie, so you should give me the remainder of your free time to do what I want. I made you a handmade gift, so you should make me something equally precious. I gave up my day to help you, so you owe me one of your days. All ways to create lousiness within.

Reciprocation may enhance friendships. It might define loyalty. It definitely increases quality of life. But it is not love.

We love those we serve. That is why parents love their children more than their children will ever love them. RE will never understand how much I love her until she moves heaven and earth for her own child and wakes up a few decades beyond childbirth realizing her life hasn't been her own for some time.

I give my love to lots of types of people:

     people that don't have a clue I love them

     people that reject my love

     people that appreciate my love

     people that underestimate my love

     people that misunderstand my love

     people that want my love

Which brings me to a favorite quote. I have this quote pasted inside my Bible on Map 15. I believe my reasoning for gluing the quote on Map 15 was that Map 15 didn't look like a map I'd use a lot and I needed some serious real estate for this quote. The quote is by Neal A. Maxwell:

"It was Paul who said that love is never wasted. It is not, of course, that the recipients of the love and praise always respond in a manner that we might hope. But it still can be said that there is never any waste of love because the giver of such love is also truly a beneficiary. The stretching of the soul and the reaching out to others can produce a capacity for generosity that may, in fact, exceed the capacity of the recipient to receive or appreciate the love given. But love is never wasted because, at a minimum, IT ENLARGES THE CAPACITY OF THE GIVER. In that sense, something good always happens."

IF I love you, I have chosen to love you whether or not you write me back, invite me over, give me gifts, promote me, defame me, or even respect me.  I will love you even if I am wasted on you. Because my gift is freely given.

*Image of "A Letter To His Wife", Peter Henry Evanson, 1926. His wife was "Sally" Elsie Leona Mabel Evanson.

...THIRD BAR PURCHASED 7-16-12. "X" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

...FOURTH BAR PURCHASED 8-28-12. "I Hid My Love" by John Clare

...FIFTH BAR PURCHASED 9-11-12. Excerpt from "Elegy XVI: The Expostulation" by John Donne, starting at the beginning and ending with the line "He first desire you false..."  (Seriously, Mr. Donne must have been raked over the coals by some beauty because he is generally ticked at females in his poetry.)

...SIXTH BAR PURCHASED 1-5-13. "Let Love Go, If She Will" by Robert Louis Stevenson (I didn't really get it, but I liked the line "the King discrowned is still a King")

...SEVENTH BAR PURCHASED 2-20-13. "To The Invisible Girl" by Thomas Moore (Sweet spirit of mystery! how I should love/In the wearisome ways I am fated to rove,/To have you thus ever invisibly nigh,/Inhaling for you ever your song and your sigh!)

...EIGHTH BAR RECEIVED *on my birthday* 5-12-13  Two stanzas from "Invitation to Love" by Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first starting with "Come when the nights are bright with stars..."  Cute poem.

...NINTH BAR PURCHASED 5-28-13 My daughter skipped school to work with dad, I was home alone with a thunderstorm and a dark house to enjoy this bar to. Luscious. The poem was Shakespeare's Sonnet 43 "When most I wink then do mine eyes best see..." If Shakespeare wrote me a love note I'd either totally get it or have no clue what he was saying.

...TENTH BAR PURCHASED 7-25-13 "Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art" by John Keats. Meh.

...ELEVENTH BAR PURCHASED 2-6-14 "The Dream" by Theodore Roethke  Some poets come across as borderline stalkers. This man included. But I liked his line "She knew the grammar of least motion"

PIXEL

If life is a large image then I have been focused on one pixel for a decade.

It isn't wrong to focus on a single pixel. It's a pixel that bridges two phases of my life. An important pixel. A keystone pixel, if you will.

Sometimes I wonder what the Big Picture of my life will look like. I know I get to view it eventually but for now...Pixel Land. The wonderful thing about having religion to lean on is faith. Faith assures me that I don't need to SEE the Big Picture because I can FEEL the Big Picture. I can FEEL that my image is spectacular and that my image is going to work out just fine even though I'm stuck SEEING one pixel right now.

Kim Matthews, upon being released as the ward Relief Society President, bore this testimony:

"Just because the Lord doesn't fix our problems right away or at all doesn't mean we aren't worth fixing. It means He sees the bigger picture."

Her words were like a salve to my heart's road rash.

The way I handle myself in this crucible of BABYWANTING will affect my picture. I hope I am making it prettier.

I have had this image on my fridge for the last several years. To me it defines faith. It also reminds me of Wes Sherman, one of my dad's good friends when I was younger and still living in Missouri. He loved the hymn "Lead, Kindly Light."

Lead, kindly Light, amid th'encircling gloom;

Lead thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home;

Lead thou me on!

Keep thou my feet; I do not wish to see

The distant scene - one step enough for me.

I want to be as faithful as the person in the hymn. I want to be satisfied with only seeing one step at a time. I want to feel peace as I teeter over a chasm with no idea what to do next. I know where I came from, and I know what comes after this life, but as for the gap in the middle...we'll see. I tried to place several obvious pieces in front of me assuming they were suitable bridge material. No luck. They fell through. I am now placing pieces solely through faith. It is becoming easier than the other way.

*Look here, I didn't know I was going to blog many years ago when I ripped stuff out of magazines as I cleaned the giant piles of paperwork on my kitchen counter. If I knew who illustrated this, I'd give them credit. I am trying to find out. I have calls in to BYU Publishing & Graphics. I promise to give the guy credit as soon as I know.

Chirp

Greg read an article that said the average kid laughs 400 TIMES A DAY, while the average adult is lucky to laugh 20 times.

How did I get from a being that kid to where I am now?

RE aims for sprinklers on our bike rides. I avoid them.

RE likes to get wet at the car wash. I hate it.

RE skips everywhere. I walk like an old man.

RE can swing on her stomach. I tried it last week and caused some immediate reflux and possibly punctured my pancreas.

RE did 38 consecutive somersaults down the big hill at Thanksgiving Point. I did three and had a pounding headache the rest of the day.

RE did the stair stepper on Level 20 (the highest level) for 20 minutes and literally beamed and giggled, "Does this thing go faster?" while I was on the machine next to her sweating to death at Level 7.

RE eats sugar. A lot. She didn't miss one day of school last year and never gets sick.

RE loses sleep over excitement for her birthday and major holidays. I sleep just fine.

RE sings more than she does handstands, and she does a handstand every twenty seconds.

A Red-eyed Vireo sings more than 20,000 SONGS A DAY. RE must be that bird.

I always tell Greg that all is well with the world if RE is singing. Her singing is a sign that she is happy. She gets it from Greg. Greg's mom, Mother Bear, says that Greg would sing for hours in his crib. He still sings a lot, mostly to Kelly Clarkson or that annoying song that starts "If I die young bury me in satin...". Sometimes at dinner Greg and RE have entire conversations in song. While I love music, I only sing aloud if I am alone in the car as public solos are my one fear. (Once I subbed for the Primary chorister and when I sang a few bars and the kids just stared at me my armpits had a let-down reflex.)

I feel like, at best, I chirp at life. I need to be more like my daughter.

*Photo caption: RE playing the perfect summer game/time-honored tradition that I played as a kid. You put every pair of underwear in the house on the ceiling fan, turn it on, and try to catch as many pairs as you can. I played this game with all of four of my siblings. We were creative kids. We also invented a game called "Sharky Sharky" that involved the sofa cushions as islands. Once my brother nearly split his head open on the edge of the pool table when he was escaping the shark. My mom must have loved hearing our games through the walls while she enjoyed a little personal time.