Wishy-wishy

Felicitations Fa-la-la-la-lovelies,

It's that time of the year again! We are all stressed beyond reason in this joyous season(sorry, I love rhyming)and because I work in customer service, I get to see the best and the worst of people all the time, but it's exacerbated by our wacky gift-focused culture. I have to admit, sometimes I don't love the Holiday Season because of my job. It becomes tedious when you are berated day after day for not having the RIGHT thing in stock or for not having the best sale and then there's that whole "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" thing. Luckily, I sell clothes for children, so I get to talk to children and they are not ever mad if I say we don't have something. They might be disappointed, but they can be cheered up by a dumb joke(Why did Adele cross the road? To say "hello" from the other side) or a compliment or just by being recognized as a full human being. One of the best things that has happened this year is my company decided to put up a wish tree in every store. There is a whole contest attached to it and it's going to promote our social media, but I just read the wishes the kids put up and they are amazing. For every "I want everything in the store" or "iPhone 6s" or "PONY!" wish, there is a "I hope no other children get cancer, like I did" or "I wish my Grandma could come back from Heaven" or "I wish there was enough food all the time." What a lesson for us grownups. Because while we're rushing around, freaking out because we can't find one thing on her list, she is wishing for "Peace on Earth." Huh.


Yesterday morning, it was raining. Anyone who drops their child off at an elementary school in the morning knows that the number of people who drop their children off at school explodes exponentially on rainy mornings. People drive through the car rider lane who don't even have kids, that's how many people there are. The other thing that happens is that the people who are there to open doors for children and pull them out of the car(because their mom put them in full rubber regalia to meet the icy 65 degree winds on the three steps to the front door and the kids can't even move their extremities) are frantically waving everyone in because "THE TARDY BELL IS GOING TO RING AND YOU ARE GOING TO BE TARDY AND OMG THE HUMANITY! THE TAARRDDYYY BEELLLLLLLL!"So there is a weird sense of urgency to the whole thing, even though they know there is a line around the block. I drove E to school, like every morning, and we left at the same time as every morning, because that's how we roll. That meant we ended up at the end of a very long line to enter the school. Usually, we all use the zipper method to merge into the line from two different directions, but the rain people were unaware that we use manners and it was getting a little crazy. A large, black SUV decided to drive onto the grass in front of the school, people park there all the time. But this person didn't park. They drove around the parked cars and then GOT BACK IN THE LINE by cutting off a Fiat who was about 5 cars ahead of where they were before. Nobody honked. I think we were all stunned. And then I started thinking "Do they not understand that they are part of a community? That people they know and that their children go to school with are all watching? That their very own children are watching and learning from them?" It made me think of all those people who are trying to make their loved ones happy by screaming at sales clerks and elbowing other shoppers out of the way so that they can get the last red sweater.

Why are kids so much better at valuing relationships than adults are? Why do we lose that as adults? That idea that even superficial relationships are important? It's not just human relationships, every organism in the world has to coexist with the things around it and when they don't--when one thing gets out of control--everything goes haywire: think cancer cells, plagues of locusts, global warming. I know that I walk around stuck inside my own head ALL THE TIME. I also know that every time I act like a jerk(and that is so much more often than I would like) it's because I'm thinking about how the world impacts me and not how I impact the world. Doing the right thing is SO hard, but it makes the world SO much better. Today, I'm going to try to make one new, positive relationship, even though I feel like grumbling. Wish me luck, wish me peace, wish me joy(just don't wish for a pony--they're so much work).

Love,
Corks

How can we work together? **edited for another mass shooting**

Dear lovely compatriots,

So here we are again, my loves. Another mass shooting. Not a law has been passed, nor a loophole closed. The NRA knows what it is doing. This time the violence targeted a minority group, so again, nothing is going to happen. I mean, we know it's not, after Sandy Hook. If we can't examine our hearts and laws after Sandy Hook, when precious children died, then nothing is going to happen today. And it breaks my heart. I used to have faith that good would prevail, but I'm losing it. Day after day after day after day of mass shootings. I have a FB friend who updates his status every time there is a mass shooting and it's every fucking day, sometimes twice. We are better than this, my friends. We have to be. We need to start demanding to have a conversation that starts and ends with a prayer, or a moment of silence, for the victims of gun violence. http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/last-72-hours. This website will show you how many people have been killed or injured in the last 3 days. It includes the Orlando shootings. Read the list and remember that every single one of those victims is someone's motherfathersisterbrotherauntunclesondaughterfriendcitizenhuman. Shame on us for not demanding change. Shame on us for accepting the death of innocents.

*Start of original text* I'm going to piss many of you off. You may not want to be my friend anymore, and that makes me sad. I am tired, though, of having my voice drowned out. The gun violence situation in this country is out of control. We all know it, to varying degrees. It's explained away by mental illness, or jihadism or evil. Mental illness, terrorism and most especially, evil, are not new concepts, realities or facts. They have existed as long as people have. I do not challenge the idea that people with an agenda will do bad things with whatever tool is at hand. 9/11 and Oklahoma City happened with nary an automatic weapon in sight and they were events that were catastrophic and life-changing and terrible, in the full-meaning of that word. But Columbine and Sandy Hook and Aurora and Charleston and New Orleans and Colorado Springs and San Bernardino and all of the other mass shootings are no less terrible. They terrorize all of us, whether we admit it or not.

As a child, I did not go to school concerned about someone opening fire in the cafeteria. Now, I have a kid with a plan on how to get out of school, in case of a mass shooting. There is one class that causes this kid concern because it would be hard to escape from that class. This is a cause of anxiety to my child, my heart of hearts. And if my kid is worried about it, your kid is worried about it. Maybe not actively, or outwardly, but it lurks somewhere inside. We wonder why there is an increase in children with mental illness, maybe it is a society that turns its eye blindly against the violence that stalks its own.

I'm not going to quote statistics to you, because that's not my gift, but you can go to http://www.bradycampaign.org/key-gun-violence-statistics, to get some info. I'm sure some of you will consider that a biased organization, but it's an organization born out of gun violence and facts are facts(yes, I know statistics can be used to make any argument, but I'm writing this, so I get to choose my source). So, what is the source of all this gun violence? Some say it's the availability of military/"assault"-style weapons(here's a Salon article about the difficulty in pinning down just how many there are--which is a scary thought in itself: http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/20/assault_rifle_stats_how_many_assault_rifles_are_there_in_america.html). Some say it's the breakdown of the family and our loss of Christian values and everyone points the finger.

I am going to point that finger back at me, and all of us, who have been upset by the death toll and have prayed to God or asked the Universe or made offerings to Buddha to stop this violence, but have not taken action. When we accept the status quo of gun violence in America and refuse to listen to alternatives, whether they involve gun control or not, we become the violence. When we refuse to engage in conversation and only throw out talking points, we become the violence. When we let ourselves be silenced, whether it's to avoid conflict, or save friendships, or any. other. reason. we become the violence. I don't want to be a part of it anymore. I am so, so tired of the terrible toll gun violence is taking on our children and our country. Let's talk about solutions. I want to hear yours, I hope you'll hear mine, there has to be another way.

I love all of you and I trust we can find a solution together. Please post any comments that are positive, solutions-driven, love-fostering, status quo-challenging. I reserve the right to delete any comments that I feel are widening the divide between us. Kindness first.

Love,
Corks

Practiced Imperfection

Season's Greetings, friends!

Today is December 1. You probably knew that, but it kind of sneaked up on me because I manage a kids' store and Black Friday exists. Everyone gets busy this time of year: there are parties and Tree Lightings and Cookies with Santa and Elf on the Shelf and Sitting on Santa's Lap and I'm going to 'fess up, I dread all of that. Sometimes(read: all the time) it's hard to be a dreamy, perfectionist, creative person because you can, and have, imagined the perfect moment for everything. Like, "Let's go to the Christmas Tree Lighting, on a cold night, and you can all wear adorable hats until it's time to take a picture and then you'll all smile with nothing dripping from your noses and no tears, even though the police car will sound its siren no less than 10 feet away and scare the pants off of everybody!" Or "We should go visit Santa and precious infant will not spit up on her crushed velvet milliseconds before the camera snaps, both ruining picture AND gorgeous dress that will never look quite the same in the one spot and might have cost about 25% of the entire Holiday budget!" The Christmas ornaments won't simultaneously offgas both the smell of bat guano and disinfectant, not causing the newly adopted insane dog to rip things off of the tree to tear them into tiny, bat-smelling shreds.

So, maybe I have seen one or two of my perfect dreams go down the toilet and I may be the teensiest bit cynical about the Holidays, but I love Advent and Christmas and watching my kids with starry eyes as they gaze at the (stinky) Christmas tree and fight about who actually owns which Baby's First Christmas ornament. I love church and greens and singing Christmas Carols. I love reading O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" and listening to Dylan Thomas read "A Child's Christmas in Wales"(thank you, YouTube), and I love the story of  Jesus' birth--the whole thing--from the Annunciation to the Three Kings and all of the bits in between: Joseph's integrity, Mary's faith, their perseverance amid the chaos of miracles. I love the conversations with my children this Season engenders about how Christmas is a wonderful time to celebrate the birth of Christ, but Easter is the big party! And why wasn't there room in the Inn and why was Herod so threatened by a little tiny baby? I love our overcrowded house and trying to find seats for everybody at dinner. I love eating with Grandmother's sterling and Aunt Winnie's china on top of the tablecloth that Nannan crocheted for us, even when  the silver is a little tarnished and the gravy boat is no longer attached to the saucer. I adore the smell of mincemeat pie cooking and everything else cooking and the smell of the Christmas tree when it is new and the pine needles when it isn't.

Maybe I'm not a perfectionist all the time. I think years of practiced imperfection has given me an appreciation of the perfect in the ordinary and the terrible and the ridiculous. My wish for you, in this wishiest season of all, is that you see all of the perfection around you even when it doesn't feel very perfect. Because it is there and it is glorious.

Wishing you all good and perfectly imperfect things!

Love,
Corks

Get a little cheese to go with my whine

Hey friends,


I have nothing to say, which is weird. I'm in a funk and it has been sucking all the fun out of me for a while. It is not a deep depression, where I can't get out of bed or shower or speak sentences. It's more like a creeping malaise that sticks its long, dark fingers into all of the things I normally enjoy, like wine. I love wine! I love everything from crisp, bright whites that taste like sunshine and citrus to chewy darks that taste like moss and chocolate. Lately, though, I don't care. I don't want a wine to perfectly compliment my dinner. I'll just have tap water. Really? It has been like that with everything! I read two books that I should have LOVED and they were fine. I made a costume for E and I should have been so excited that it came out like it did and I was glad she liked it and that was it. I have been fun places and done fun things and I should be feeling HAPPY! and INVIGORATED!  and EXCITED! but I just feel meh. Part of it has to be the weather: 80 degrees and soupy does nothing for my soul. My hair is frizzy, my skin is blotchy, my knees hurt and I feel the oppression of humidity inside all the fibers of my being(it makes me whiny, too).

Maybe crisp autumn days and a fire in the fireplace because it's actually cold and getting into bed and having the sheets feel chilly and crisp, instead of soggy, will make me feel better? Maybe...but I'll probably have to ride it out. Usually, I come out on the other side of these downtimes with some kind of new skill or awareness or idea. Change is hard and it takes so much energy that I guess there's nothing left for fun or creativity. I wonder, what skill am I honing way down below the surface? I haven't really tried to do anything new, except for this writing thing and the ever-elusive "be a better person." Maybe in a week or three or six or twelve, I'll be writing Pulitzer Prize-quality sentences and you'll all be saying "I knew her when..." But I doubt it.  I'm hoping, maybe, I'll be nicer to myself.

What do you do when you've got the creeping funk? Do you feed it? Do you listen to sad music? Do you light candles and watch them flicker? Do you lie in bed late at night and look at the ceiling and bemoan every choice you've ever made? Ever. Like, "why did I think neon Jamms and pink converse high tops were going to make me look HAWT?" (It has been thirty years now, and that question haunts me.) Why didn't I study something artsy in college? Why didn't I listen when people gave me good advice? Why did I listen when people gave me bad advice? Why is my gut reaction ALWAYS anger? I think I have tapped into what's driving my funk/insomnia: WHY DO I ASK SO MANY DAMN QUESTIONS? WHY CAN'T I ACCEPT THE STATUS QUO? WHY CAN'T I BE HAPPY?

Let me know if you figure it out. I'm going to be sitting in the dark, listening to the Smiths with the air conditioning turned down to 60.

Love,
Corks

PS Don't worry about me. I'm already bored with this funk. I'll be pulling myself up by the bootstraps in no time. xoxo

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration. Charles Dickens

Hello, my Darlings!

I've missed you. How are you? I've been thinking about you all because I'm reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and I feel released, creatively. I'd been trying to add some sort of learning I've gleaned into every blog and I've decided to set myself free. I want to just experience and write and if there's a lesson in it, FANTASTIC! And if there isn't, who cares? Life can be learning or experience(which we all know is learning) and I don't feel obligated to beat you over the head with it.

I had also been beating myself up about not editing more, but I am in the throes of being mom and wife and boss and human and writer and I don't have time. There will come a time when I do, but now is not that time. If I miss a word or mix a metaphor, I apologize, but I won't feel guilty. Today, I am Popeye: "I yam what I yam."

I have returned home tonight from a trip to the Metro DC area, where I grew up and where I immediately feel at home. I flew into BWI(Maryland, my Maryland) and was picked up by my BFF and we drove down the parkway, surrounded by my favorite Eastern Deciduous trees--dressed all shades of orange and yellow and some still green--and past my favorite city. I got to see the Capitol, all gussied up in scaffolding, and the Smithsonian buildings and some new offices and terrible 295 traffic and we crossed into beautiful Northern Virginia, my home of 15 years. BFF lives in the most charming neighborhood, in the most charming house, with an ivy-covered slope and beautiful brick steps up to the front door. Her house is INVITING and WARM and FUN because she has flawless taste and because she gets me. You know how you feel at home in some places and you feel at home with some people? I'm talking total package here, friends. She was prepared with things I didn't know I loved, like coloring books and bible journaling and other things I do know I love, like gin and tonics and homemade soap and shopping at Tyson's Corner.

We went junkin' and shopping and ate burgers and sweet potato fries and drank LOTS of coffee and just reveled in the normalness of our relationship, even though we only get to hang out every other year, on average. Who else could I watch the "Unauthorized 90210" with or the Tori Spelling Lie Detector interview, with only a hint of irony(although if you ask me next week, I'll deny it)than my BFF? It was a necessity to see her because I think we both need to be grounded in the way that we ground each other. It's not necessary to explain ourselves, because we know. She knows I'm going to touch EVERYTHING and say "Isn't this fun?" and I know she's going to be drawn to sheep and bleached out colors and clean architectural details and we both know it could all go south if we indulge the (much smaller now that we're more mature)chips on our shoulders;). We are aware of our limitations and it's great. The lesson of being 43 is that you can let your friends be who they are as long as they are doing the same for you.

And then I left, wishing I could stay one more day, but knowing it was the perfect way to leave. And I arrived home to my overscheduled  and unpredictable life. To have the pilot slam the brakes on as we taxied out of Dulles "because someone was landing where we were supposed to take off" and the gate wasn't ready in ATL and I took the wrong door out of the airport and my parking ticket wouldn't read at the kiosk. I got home to pick L up from youth at church and miraculously arrived for much-needed evening prayer and sweet church friends and new church friends and finally home to my adorable family, including the new Pepper dog who actually missed me and kissed me like I was important to her. And I'm back home again, but this time with the people who love me for different reasons(I'm hot, or I once was) or I'm their mom and I don't have to cover up my arm fat or my belly sticking out and who love me because I am theirs and they are mine.

So I leave you tonight, with not so much a lesson, but a thought: home is anywhere you feel loved and supported and comfortable and family is anyone who loves you and supports you and makes you feel comfortable. You are my family and I hope I'm yours.

Love,
Corks

View from outside

Hello dears,

I went outside a minute ago to regather myself after reacting and reacting and reacting to my family. I watched the clouds roll along and the moon rise among the pines and I saw the faces of my ancestors and all of the stories in the sky. "What are you trying to tell me?" I asked one gaping, sneering maw. And I asked another to send me a smile and its eye just narrowed. For a moment, I saw my father's profile--the jutting jaw, the straight nose, the deep-set eyes--that I recognize in my and my children's faces. Then it was gone, lost to the ever-changing sky, lost like so many other happinesses to the impending storm.

It's been stormy around here lately. So much loss and grief and melancholy, we're still trying to break out of the funk. The sky is a mimic, I guess. It sends back to me what I send into it. That sneer, that frown, that profile, is me.

I needed that moment with the unforgiving scape to step away and hear my life from the other side of a badly insulated window. I could hear A making a pb&j for E, who wasn't a fan of Michael's tetrazzini, even as he teased her about not eating mushrooms. I could hear A and Michael enjoying their soccer game with it's remarkable hat trick +2 and the more remarkable beaming Germans. I know Lily is upstairs happily doing homework and texting on the coveted cellphone that we were so reluctant to give her. I could hear my life being lived and I could appreciate it so much more from the outside because, sometimes, from the inside it's so. much. noise.

Watching the moonrise, finding the faces, I'm reminded of the universal music that winds around above us and is caught, occasionally, by Indonesian musicians playing percussion in gamelan.
Listen here:
http://freemusicarchive.org/curator/FMA/blog/MP3_of_the_Day_Peliatan_Gamelan_Kapi_Radja

And universal music made me think of Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk(http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius?language=en) about creativity and productivity and the living, breathing genius that comes to us and refuses to let us go until we've produced something and how CAN that be anything but the universal wind that blows around the world and sometimes descends to us to give us gifts of music and art and inspires people and animals and flowers to bloom and grow and greet us every morning? And if I'm sitting in my backyard blowing angry faces into the clouds, how can I be inspiring anything good in the world? Have I engaged the muse of melancholy who inspires sad songs and bad poetry and hotel seascapes? Will I have to answer for this negative addition to the world? Will I have to listen to sentimental poetry or the same POP song over and over and over again(seriously T. Swift, I love you, but it's too much)?

I don't know. I won't in this world, I guess. Too many questions for tonight, but I am going to sit out and face those copycat clouds again and I'll try to send out something hopeful and maybe something positive will descend on the world.

Lots of love to all of you.

Love,
Corks

Mind the pedestrian.

Hello My Sweets!

I live on a country lane, one hairpin turn and one s-curve from the closest highway. When we moved to the outer suburbs of a mediumish Georgia city, our neighborhood was decidedly quiet. There were three subdivisions on our stretch of road, but not a lot of traffic. Then they built another subdivision and they keep building in the first three and then a middle school, so now our little lane is busy and decidedly unquiet. Our road is also part of a series of roads that connects two four-lane highways that eventually lead to other cities, so that adds another layer of traffic, plus the elementary school two miles away and the factory at the end of the road. I will sit in my backyard sometimes--early, with coffee--hoping to get some piece and quiet and, inevitably, it's broken up by the whoosh of cars rushing past.

Often, in the mornings, especially in the summer when I'm leaving for work or going out to do errands, I see a small, older woman walking down the side of the lane(against traffic like they taught us as children). She's usually wearing culottes, and a bright green polo shirt with the collar popped, so clearly she's a woman with a sense of purpose--you don't pop your collar without one, after all. She walks on the car side of the white line on our busy two-lane road, and she does not waver a centimeter as I pass her. Her expression is stern and authoritative and she stares me down, silently daring me to hit her. I'm pretty sure that if I did hit her, she would leave a tiny woman-shaped dent in the car and then keep on going--she's that tough-looking. If there is a car in the other lane and I can't glide over the yellow lines to avoid her and I have to inch past her, she takes the time to give me the death-glare, but it's not like there is anything I can do about it.  She walks in the road when she's going around the blind curve, so that if someone is coming around the curve in the wrong lane, I have nowhere to go. Her choice of grass green polo also helps to camouflage her against the lush jungle of oaks, clover, ragweed and pines on the side of the road, oh and the really lovely bermuda grass of the house on the corner of the hairpin turn. Clearly, this woman is a menace. And she doesn't care.

Maybe you share a fear with me? The fear of running over a pedestrian or bicyclist as they amble down the road beside you? I just know in the core of my being that any cyclist I pass is going to fall under my wheels and I'll squash their head like an errant watermelon from a produce truck. I would rather trail along behind them, going 15, than pass. This senior sociopath makes me feel the same way. I am terrorized by her. And that really pisses me off. As I approach her, I feel the bile rising. I want to roll down the window and say "get out of the f*&^%#@ road, you monster!" but so far I have suppressed that urge, because it would simply encourage the little Napolean's anti-social behavior and I would look like a jerk. Although I think I do already. I believe my facial expression when I see her is half-scowl/half-sneer. Why does she bother me so?

I think it's because I value community and cooperation. I grew up in a place that's hard to explain--religious community, commune, communal farm are the closest to it, but none of them is quite right--and without anyone ever saying it, I grew up with a sense that it's up to each of us to make room for each other and sometimes that means yielding when you don't want to. It must have been the one-lane road on the farm. If you were walking and a car come up the gravel path, you had to hop into the trees to make way, or if you were driving, you had to back up until the nearest intersection, which could take a minute. I was a teenager then so I'm sure I sometimes felt annoyed at having to back up to let others through, but no more than any other teenage angst. I was way more annoyed that my parents and I shared one car, so my dad would drop me off and pick me up from work. Ugh. Anyway, the diminutive tyrant on my street is flouting the idea of cooperation. I don't want her to get off the road when there's no one around but me. I'm glad to move over. I just want some consideration when there are other cars around, because if I run her over, I will be the one left to suffer the consequences.

Really, isn't that a modern problem? We've all started to live like strangers. I know I run around with my head in the clouds, lost in my own thoughts most of the time. I've almost run over people I know in parking lots because I was thinking about my hair. MY. HAIR. I am trying to be more others-aware, but it's hard. I'm at a time in my life that is dominated by sensory assault--at home, at work, everywhere I go. I have three children at home and two out in the world and a husband who need me, and a job that requires near-constant human interaction (and is punctuated by bright colors!), plus the new normal of relentless media. Are we all overwhelmed? Is that why we don't take the time to work together anymore? Are we just tired of interacting because we have forced interaction every day? I'm not sure, but I do know that I live inside my head a lot these days. So, what do I do? Charge myself, I guess, to really engage, to find connections with those people I feel inclined to push off to the side of the road. Watch out, Ms. Cranky Culottes, you might even see me smile.

Love,
Corks