opposite day

when i worked at summer camp, our cook, Pappa Bear, decided i needed a nickname. unimpressed with the list of names i have been given by my friends and family (and it's a long, occasionally funny list), Pappa Bear insisted on coming up with his own, something uniquely descriptive, something all my own, something that everyone would know belonged only to me.



you know you have a special nickname at camp when Pappa Bear puts a name tag on your cup. i shouldn't have been suprised at breakfast during that second week when "Rachel" was replaced by "SNAFU" in all capital letters.



SNAFU is one of those charming phrases we've inheirited from the Marine Corps. since my poppy was a marine, i'd heard that phrase all my life. i was in college before i think i really knew what all the letters meant. i mean, i'd gotten the flavor of it even as a small child. SNAFU was something i lived. having that lovely phrase as my nickname only added another layer of irony to the cake.

SNAFU means that i have no idea what it's really like to be bored. i mean, i understand boredom on an emotional level...like last night, i couldn't find anything to do, my brain was so full that i was afraid blood was going to start running from my ears, but i couldn't bring myself to actually take a shower, dress, and go someplace. so, i sat on my bed and reworked part of a rug i've been making for the last five years. and i also watched "Celebrity Apprentice". this is shaming to me, because i really really really like this show. and i hate everything about this show. it's just so...messy and catty and horrible and so different from my little life that i literally will only pee during commercials, and i won't take phone calls. it's worse than watching "Days of Our Lives", which also embarassess me to admit to watching. i don't even want to think about how grammatically incorrect that last sentence was...

in dealing with things that aren't boring, i have to say that i really do have the market cornered. at least in my corner of the universe, i do. i'm sure i have nothing on the social workers who hang out downtown, or the er docs who pull lord-knows-what out of people's hoo-hoo's all day long, or mommies who get handfuls of frogs and rolly-polly's in their hands while cleaning out little pockets. but the freakshows i get to watch (and i say that with a lot of love in my ity-bity-tiny-coal-black-hard-heart) are pretty incredible. it's not what i imagined my life would look like at 30, but it is MY life, and even on days when it's hard, it's beautiful and i wouldn't trade it with anyone, for anything.

there are so many things going on in my head these days. it's hard to pin down which ones i want to talk about, which ones i want to ponder, which ones need to be wrapped in newsprint and packed away for a while, and which ones are just too far out of reach/sight to be reasonable. it's not that my brain is any more or less full than normal, i think it's just that i'm taking better stock of what's going on, what stuff means, why things move in cycles and waves, and how i'm doing at managing all of those things.

i've been with therapy mary for a year, now. i feel clearer than i've felt in a long time. it's not that a lot has changed since last year, because it hasn't, at least not on a macro level. but at the bottom of things, the volume seems to be turned down a little bit. instead of feeling like a substitute teacher walking into an algebra class full of hateful children who are all bent on breaking me, when i sit down to think about things, or when they creep into my head, i feel much more like a sweet, but semi-stern librarian, asking rowdy children to quiet down, so she can answer their questions about the card catalogue one at a time. maybe that's an odd analogy, but it works for me.

life is good.

mil besos,
rmg

all things considered

there's usually a lot going on in my head that i never say anything to anyone about. that's pretty true at the moment, as well. granted, if you added up the sum total of what each person in my life knows about me/what's going on, you'd have a pretty spot on idea of the whole picture.

what's going on in my head today is somewhere between white noise and primal scream. and i just can't make friends with it.


meh. the trash heap has spoken. expect a decent post later in the week.

mil besos,
rmg

rambling...

there's no picture for this post. i know, that's a departure from recent habit. i'm sure you will be just fine.

somehow, writing things here feels more purgative than writing in my journal. like it's not real unless i write it down for other people to see. i don't write the hard things as much as i should. i make it a habit to keep the deepest things away from other people, sometimes even from myself. but i'll tell you this...

i walk by it every day, at least twice a day, but more like six or seven times. i can't even bring myself to look at it, head on. the damn thing is so familar, even if i just catch it out of the corner of my eye, i can see every feature clearly. it mocks me with silence and emptiness. i know a thing is only a thing. and i know that this thing belongs to me, again for several very good reasons, not the least of which is that it is, in fact, mine. those facts notwithstanding, i am on the verge of outright hatred for this object. it mocks me with clean lines, hand rubbed spindles, sense-memories of long-forgotten meals.

i look at it and i force myself not to tear up. all the other stuff just like it, i have managed to wedge into a closet upstairs, in a room other than my own. i can avoid that stuff for months on end. i only kind of barely remember the stuff is there. but this thing won't fit into the space i've carved out for the rest of the artifacts. i can steel myself to have to grab something from that closet, or open it to put something into it. i can't seem to steel myself to walk through my kitchen every day, though. it's such a regular activity...you'd never imagine what a test of the will it can be to use the back door, and not run out the front door, just to avoid seeing my high chair.

that's right. MY high chair. i used it. there are photos of me sound asleep slumped over it's tray. my brother used it. my nephew even sat in it, once or twice. but every time i see that thing, all i can see are the faces of the children i see only in my sleep.

mil besos,
rmg

hands

i have never liked my hands. i have been trying to make peace with that since i was a little girl.

i know that's an especially silly thing for a woman to say, so typical of early 21st century female insecurities. there's a book called "i feel bad about my neck", so i guess it's chic and accepatable for me to feel bad about my hands.

my mother, my grandmothers, my aunt, my fairy god-mothers, my friends...all of them have beautiful hands. even the men in my life have lovely hands. for the longest time, everytime i looked at my hands, i was disappointed in them, disappointed in myself. my hands were a reflection of what i felt about my whole self...so close to being good, but not actually good, at all. i looked at them and all i could see were the improvements that needed to be made, the things that had slipped through them, the things they had broken that could not be mended, or lost and couldn't be found.

i used to get in so much trouble when i was little for being messy, for losing things, for not keeping track of things, for going too fast and messing things up, for not putting things away. i track it all back to my hands. i have made every effort to put away that messy child, to get all the barbie wash-off nail polish washed off her ragged cuticles. she still peeks out from time to time, and rolls her eyes when i make my bed in the mornings. she also has a real problem with the weekly dusting, almost ritualized in it's pattern every saturday. i suppose there was a time when she was sure that all that activity, all the mess would cover up how she really felt about herself, and her hands. now, i try to clean up all the mess, keep it neat and tidy, so maybe no one will notice that my hands are too big, too hot, too efficient.

i am not one of those people who can just have fun...it makes me feel guilty, and nervous that the bottom is about to fall out. i know, i know, i'm supposed to trust God, my fellow humans, etc. who doesn't have fun, right? here's the thing...i can only let myself have fun and enjoy something if i feel like i'm contributing to society, being taught a lesson, or teaching a lesson. i know, it's sick. this is why (ok, it's one of the reasons why) i see a therapist regularly. anyway, i usually extend the "it's not just a fun ride" principle into my work life, as well. and that is how i ended up with my hands (the hands i cannot make myself learn to like or love) full of mysterious red dirt inside a very small church in an even smaller town in a remote part of new mexico.

i am fascinated by miracles...not just the healings, although they are paramount. i love the stories that go with the miracles. stories about mundane things, ordinary people, every day heartbreak seem to collide with grace, mercy, angels, and (like aeschylus said to agammemnon) the awful grace of God. i had been fascinated by miracle shrines like lourdes, fatima, and chimayo for years before i ever thought about visiting one of the sites. but i found myself organzing a trip for some of the kids i used to work with around chimayo and the santa fe ski area. see...fun and work.

so i took the children skiing. and i took them to the loretto chapel in santa fe. we prayed. we shopped. we ate alot. the kids liked the skiing. they moaned and groaned the day i told them we weren't going up the mountain, we were going around it.

we talked about miracles that day, for a long time. i told them the story of chimayo, which you can read here: http://chimayo.org/history.html they seemed sort of underwhelmed, but were willing to go along with me, because i knew where all the snacks were. we talked about whether we believed in miracles, what constituted a miracle, why miracles do or don't happen depending on the situation, etc. they were smart kids. once we got to the church, the kids were getting quiet, doing their own thinking, preparing themselves to be still and do some thinking. i was very proud of them.

and so, we ended up inside this lovely little church, wandering through, saying our prayers, thinking thoughts to ourself, not really whispering or anything. and all of a sudden, we were in front of this little hole in the ground, full of the most beautiful red dirt i had ever seen. i remember feeling this overwhelming compulsion to put my hands in the dirt and rub it across my palms, through my fingers, up to my wrists, like i was washing my hands. so that's what i did. other pilgrims had brought little baggies or boxes to take home dirt from this little hole. the dirt is supposedly the vehicle of miraculous healings that have taken place at chimayo...healings, pregnancies, relief from pain, etc. the walls of the little room with the little hole are decorated with old crutches, wheels from wheelchairs, pictures of babies. and so there i stood, all of 25 years old, still with so much to learn and see and do, with two handfuls of red dirt, staring blankly at a pair of hands that really no longer looked like mine, no longer looked detestable to me.

i brushed the excess dirt off my hands, put them to my face, and breathed in the earthy aroma of that glorious red dirt. i exited the little room with the little hole, i looked at my palms, and they were glittering...quartz in the dirt...diamond dust...miracles happen every day.

nothing has been the same since. i look at my hands, at what they are doing, and i try to make it good, make it an offering. we have so much to do, and such a little time to do it, and i don't want to be careless with a single minute, don't want to pass up a minute of joy or learning, don't want to miss a sunrise or a sunset because i'm off doing something piddly and small. i don't want to miss doing something incredible because i'm worried about how my hands will look, or what kind of mess might get made.

i look at my hands now, knowing full well there is not a shred of dirt left on them from that early spring day. i think about how the red dirt filled in the lines and rings on my palm and finger tips, and how that moment, staring at my hands, felt like a thousand years, how i could feel the life in the dirt flowing into my hands, getting me ready for something new. if i close my eyes and think of early spring in the mountains, that is what i remember. i know i picked up something important that day. i am still trying to find out how to put it to use.

thanks be to God.

mil besos,

rmg