Bucket List

What: Monthly Group Blog Posts
Why: Because of Andes Cruz & Her Indomitable Spirit
Who:

• Andes Cruz
• Mary Spencer
• Stephanie Nocito Clark
• Shaun Young:
• Brad Severtson:
• Beth Cyr:
• Kathleen Krucoff:
• Laura Flavin:
• Andrea Bell:
• Thomasin Durgin:
• Natsuko Hanks:
• Barbara Donovan:

This month’s topic being my bucket list.

I think I could get excited about this

For the past 3 and a half months, I have been running around like a chicken with its head cut off (not a pretty image, is it?) madly building websites about essential oils and schooling at home, signing up with accounts at Elance and Guru.com, applying for jobs as a grocery clerk (among other things) and generally acting frantic and disjointed. Oh, and I took a 3 week trip to California and a 12 week course in Advanced Psychopathology (almost finished with my MS degree).

It’s not like I didn’t enjoy all that I have been up to. I have enjoyed nearly every minute. But honestly, I think I need a bucket list. I need a list to refer to when things get hectic.

Those of you who are mothers (and yes, I think more so than the fathers, but I’m sure I might be wrong) may understand this: since I have become a mother, I have completely dropped the idea of “my” goals — things “I” want to do before “I” die. Quite rightly, I think, I am happy — I am content. My children and my family are sufficient for me. I never thought those words would come out of my mouth…and anyone who has known me for very long must think that I was abducted by aliens…fair enough.

So it’s a bit different from “before kids” — I don’t **need** to do anything before I die…that’s a bit of a weird place for someone like me to be in…but truly, if I died tomorrow, I’d die content with what my life has become.

So, why a bucket list, then??

Because I think I’m ready for one again. I think I need one.

My bucket list, for the past 10 years has been, if I am honest with myself, to have a happy family. I was under the mistaken impression, before I had kids, that if I did all the right things, and said all the right things, I would have a happy family. As it turns out, it’s not that easy. So I dropped everything, and all my focus went into that one goal.

As it turns out, I had to *not* listen to the wisdom of my elders (bless them), and, in many cases, I had to turn popular culture on its head. I had to do (here I am going to mangle Willa Cather, sorry) “live like everybody, while not being like anyone”

So, goal accomplished. Whew. And time for a new bucket list. A new set of goals.

Scary, really.

1. Spend time reading, writing, speaking and listening to French and Japanese.

Use French in my daily life. Pass level 2 of the Nihongo no ryoku shiken.

2. Begin my counseling practice.

Make positive change in my community. (this requires an entire page in itself)

3. Publish a novel.

(in the midst of all the chicken-with-head-cut-off running around, I did enter a fiction contest. I ought to enter more of them)

4. Publish original research in a peer reviewed journal.

Preferably on how great mindfulness is : ).

5. Earn a decent wage : ) (that would be nice)

6. Have more of a leadership role in my community.

Really work for positive change.

7. Not sacrifice one iota of happiness that exists in my family right now. It would not be worth it. Not for all the tea in China, not for anything.

So at twenty years old, Jeanne now sat at the edge of the sea, world weary, tired, hungry and cold. Sofie had been taken at a little over a year old, stolen from her as she worked in the garden. There was no trace, no one had any idea what had happened or even why. Thomas had seemed nonplussed at the time, but went through the motions of caring and trying to find out what had happened. His actions chilled her. At fifteen, she was still a child in many ways, but she had an edge to her now. She still had not had the privilege of a friend, but she had seen the eyes of the other women in town when she went in to sell eggs and the eyes told her what she needed to know. They pitied her. They dripped sorrow and sometimes she caught a bit of the sorrow and wrapped it up in her gaze, carried it home and pondered it. Contemplated it. Wallowed in their sorrow, her tears falling on Sophie’s empty cradle. She wanted to curse someone, but who? Her mother, though at fault, had had little choice. She had needed the work Thomas offered, and had had no way to pay him. Thomas, though happy to help, had seen nothing wrong in accepting the offer of Jeanne as a way of saying thank you. God could be at fault, but there was little place in her life right now for God at all, and especially not for a God who allowed little children to suffer.

With Sofie gone, Jeanne had hardened, gotten more practical, worked, kept her head down, did as she was expected to and things improved for Thomas. He made note of the hardness in her eyes, saw that she had an edge to her and at some level seemed to realize that she had lost her innocence.

However horrid the circumstances, he had to admit Jeanne changed for the better in his eyes after Sofie’s disappearance. She didn’t care what happened at night, kept the house tidy during the day, cooked practical, hearty meals for him and stayed quiet and to herself. She seemed less sad now that Sophie was gone. He didn’t question it, just stayed home a bit more.

For five more years, she lived with Thomas and was his wife. She cared less about her life and did what she knew he wanted her to do. There was little left over. He was home more, watching her, and she kept her head down, eyes averted, and worked. The work was work now practical. She shelled peas, she baked hard bread that would last. She made stocks from the bones in the meat he shot and hung in the larder. She mended, but with quick, strong stitches. She swept efficiently, brushing the straw over the wooden floor with swift, brutal strokes that frankly intimidated Thomas. She tried to avoid sweeping when he was home. She felt no malice toward him. In fact, her feelings toward him were similar to those of an unexpected house guest. She was distant, polite, and unassuming toward him. She always offered him coffee when he arrived home in the late afternoon, and said nothing to him as she extended the mug. She never asked where he had been or what he had done. She had no idea what occupied his time, and did not care.

Giving birth renewed her innocence, briefly. Holding Sofie reminded her of her childhood which she had so recently left behind. She adored Sofie. She held her constantly, rocked her, brushed her soft hair, made small dresses for her round, tiny body. Sofie annoyed Thomas. Jeanne knew this. He tensed when he saw her feed Sofie, looked away when she cooed at her. He stayed out later, left earlier. She didn’t mind. Time in the small cottage alone with Sofie gave her all she needed. She made the little home warm and neat, swept and dusted and mended things as Sofie slept, sat and rocked Sofie when she awoke. The new joy she felt in Sofie helped her reclaim some of her lost sense of self, some of her fragile but still alive sense that she could, if she tried, hold on to some of who she was and what she needed. At night, she clung to Sophie tightly, more tightly than necessary, and tried to stay far to one side of the bed. She prayed, quietly so as not to annoy Thomas, in a hushed voice that did annoy him more than she realized. He had had no idea what being married to a child bride would be like when the idea was offered to him by Annette. He had lost his first wife just one year ago. A good woman. Solid, hardworking, practical.

Jeanne was 13 years old when he married her, mischievous, lazy, airy. She had no sense of how to run a house, no idea what a wife might be required to do. She couldn’t cook, couldn’t chop wood worth a damn. Screamed and cried when he went near her, no matter how gentle he tried to be. After she got pregnant, he gave up and started visiting prostitutes in town. Almost worse than being single, having a worthless child as a wife. He felt guilt, extreme guilt, for feeling this way. He brought little sweets home to her when he went to town, and flowers, she liked flowers. And he tried to remember that she was young, and impressionable, and that none of this was her fault. But then he’d enter his home; his own home, that he had built with his and his first wife’s hands, and he’d see her, sitting in the rocking chair that his first wife had sat in, rocking Sofie, holding Sofie like a doll, combing her hair and kissing her forehead, and he’s shudder. Did he have to live with her forever? Wasn’t there a way out? Was this really what he was going to come home to every night until…until when? And dinner. She had no idea how to cook for a man. She tried, when she realized that it was expected, to do as her own mother had done. But she had never been responsible for feeding anyone. She had helped her mother, but it seemed that she had only had to do what she liked to do and nothing more. So instead of full dinners, he had often been served little muffins and puddings.

The rock provided a seat, but not a comfortable one. She sat, still, but not serene, and yanked the large rough cloth around her shoulders a bit tighter. Waiting. Still waiting. He had said he would come, but whether he had simply forgotten the time or had been waylaid she had no idea. The wind came again now, reminding her of how unwanted she was here, how unnecessary. The wind seemed to want her gone, its icy tendrils pushing against her back, stealing underneath the makeshift shawl and prodding her. “Leave,” it seemed to say. “Come on, what’s keeping you here?”

She spat her hair out of her mouth, again, and noticed how dry her tongue was. How long had she been here? It was nearing on the end of the second day. But she could not leave. If he knew something about her daughter, anything, she was willing to wait forever. She was unsure whether she wanted the sun to shine or not. When it came out from behind the thick layer of clouds, it felt good on her face and seemed to warm her. But the air turned icier then, and seemed to slap her as it circled around her and taunted her, sitting there, alone on this rock on the edge of this cliff.

In the heavy mist, though the air was cold and damp, a heavy near warmth encircled her. Gentler, softer, it didn’t seem to need her to leave as desperately as the stark sun filled air did.

A crunch behind her. She turned, whipped her head around. A rock had fallen again from the cliff behind her. Nothing. Still. A bird could be seen circling ahead and above her, looking down toward the sea beneath her. Now vertical and down it sank through the air, dipping into the water and up again, fish firmly in its grip.

Why had she not brought any food with her? Optimism or ignorance? She really didn’t know anymore. She had no right to optimism any more, and she had relinquished the privilege to ignorance years ago. Ignorance was a privilege she could not afford. At one time, she may have considered herself naive, innocent, someone who had led a sheltered life. Now, 5 years after her daughter first went missing, seven years after her own mother had given her to the neighbor as a thank you for his help over the winter, fixing broken pipes, stocking the pantry with elk and deer and even bear meat, she was not innocent. She was tired.

Thomas was a kind man, in his own way, but he expected so much of her, so much more of her than she was willing to give freely. She had had no idea that marriage could mean that your husband had rights to your being, your innermost desires. As a child, before the marriage, she had written. She never told anyone, she kept her scraps of paper under her pillow and wrote secretly at night when she was supposed to be asleep. But after her marriage, she found that she could no longer have even those moments to herself. They were now taken by Thomas, who did not want her to write. He had taken the papers, read them, looked at them again, then at her, and, uncomprehendingly, folded them up and put them in his pocket. No words were spoken. She, 17 years his junior, did not know what reaction was appropriate. A tear had leaked out and had fallen to the floor, but he had not noticed or acknowledged it. She sat down and her head had fallen. He had left the room.

I School at Home

I School at Home is a website dedicated to homeschooling: how to homeschool, curriculum, that sort of thing.

Favorite Quote

What: Monthly Group Blog Posts
Why: Because of Andes Cruz & Her Indomitable Spirit
Who:

• Andes Cruz
• Mary Spencer
• Stephanie Nocito Clark
• Shaun Young:
• Brad Severtson:
• Beth Cyr:
• Kathleen Krucoff:
• Laura Flavin: 
• Andrea Bell:
• Thomasin Durgin:
• Natsuko Hanks:
• Barbara Donovan:

This month’s topic being a favorite quote.

Beloved, Let Us Love One Another

That quote just honestly popped into my head as I panicked, realizing that in my zeal to finish my new website about essential oils I had completely let the 20th of the month, at 9:00 a.m., slip by.

It can happen to the best of us, I guess.

Beloved is such a gorgeous word. And I love to be reminded of the idea that we are all, at our essence, beloved: well loved.

And then, from that place, it isn’t quite as difficult to do the one thing we (or I) am called to do in this life: love one another.

It’s what lets me slip (sometimes) effortlessly into meditation, what reminds me that coming from a place of love with people I find difficult is usually easier in the long run, and, ultimately, the only thing that allows me to forgive myself when I am at my most human.

Enjoy the blog-o-sphere today, and never forget who loves you, baby : ).

To me, eggs symbolize the hope inherent in motherhood

In the fall of 2006, I briefly lost my mind. I began homeschooling my 4 boys, entered a Master’s program in mental health counseling, and folded my magazine, Porch. Porch had begun as a dream of mine, and had turned into a nightmare, consuming our family’s savings. We were struggling. The combined stress of tight finances mixed with more than a little guilt that I had somehow caused it by selfishly pursuing a dream was enough. But starting to homeschool and begin a Master’s degree at the same time? I entered therapy.

I only needed a couple of months, being heard by a therapist, reminding myself of my strengths and learning some stress reduction techniques.

What I also took away from that brief but super low period was the importance of easy and free (or cheap) access to mental health counseling.

Nancia Leath has become a mentor for me as I pursue my degree in mental health counseling. She’s far away geographically, but her way of being with clients is super close to my heart. This essay, Teardrops of a Mother, by Nancia Leath, captures the essence of what is possible through good mental health counseling.

In my case, I had tons of support, internal strengths and, really, a life skill set that meant that my low period would be brief and I would persevere. Things would (and did) get better.

For other mothers, though, there isn’t nearly enough support, and, in fact, quite a few hurdles as they try to raise their children.

Soon, I will begin my field experience to finish my degree and get ready to become a mental health counselor. If I am able to help mothers find their way the time spent will be justified.