“Good Gravy”
So anyone close to me knows that I have become rather a bit of a gym rat. I run about five miles a day….bike about ten and lift weights….ohh and swim from nine to ten every night (but that does not really count as exercise…to me that is utter relaxation).
I am about 12 pounds from my weight in high school. I feel amazing and am addicted to the high that you get when you get past the mundane exercise and get into the hard core of it.
So I am a familiar face at the gym and you get to know the regulars. We laugh and talk and sit in the steam room for hours laughing and talking about our day.
The greatest part is there are guys in their early twenties to men that are ninety. The whole range of people and experiences….it is a cross section of this life and I learn something every night.
So I am getting in amazing shape and I was getting a little big for my britches.
I would walk in the gym and know that I could outrun most people on the treadmill and then hit the bikes and women have come up to me and asked me to help them get motivated (not EVER a good thing to do to a narcissist).
So last week I was running and I decided to step it up a notch and run eight miles instead of my usual five…
I was running next to a girl who was younger then me and I was pacing with her out the corner of my eye….I am VERY competitive and I just thought “Hell if she is going to out run me, I will DIE before I quit before her.”
So I pushed myself WAY past the point of reason, my body was hurting and I was sweating like a prostitute in church and all of a sudden I could smell gravy.
I started looking around and I swear to you I could smell gravy, but not any gravy….the kind from KFC that comes with the nasty fake mashed potatoes that I LOVE!
Well now feeling like I own the gym….hahaha….I finished my run (yes I out run the chick-a-dee next to me) and I got off the treadmill and started looking around to see WHO had the nerve to bring mashed potatoes and gravy to the GYM!
In my head I was talking up a storm.
I mean how cruel is that. There are people there who are desperately trying to lose weight and someone would be THAT insensitive to bring a three piece wing and breast meal to torture them???
Well I was mad and I thought someone has to stand up for the “People of the Gym.”
So I started walking around looking for the jerk.
After making the rounds several times without luck I decided to just go and get my spinning done.
It was not until about 15 minutes into the ride that I looked down and noticed that every time I pedaled I could smell the gravy…..
Then I remembered. My son had mashed potatoes the night before from KFC and when I went to pour the gravy on his potatoes I squeezed the container to hard and spattered gravy all over my shoes and my jacket and clothes. It was not until I put the shoes on again and the jacket and started sweating that the gravy smell came out…..
So yes….I was the gravy girl at the gym.
And I thought all those people wanted to work out beside me for my good form or my witty conversation…..naaa it was simply my smell of roasted chicken and mashed potatoes…..oh and can I get the gravy on the side?
moments
So my favorite thing in the world is when someone gets me to thinking.
Thinking about life and people and struggles and triumphs. They are the golden thread that tie us together. Carefully stitch the hours of my day to the minutes of yours.
I was taking down Christmas the other night and I was moving things around and carefully dusting them off and those moments that followed me around that night were very capricious.
It is sad enough to be taking the holiday down, but to find yourself being carried down a memory lane when you are not expecting it…..is tough.
Alan’s mother gave my children a picture of their father for christmas. Each little frame captured the smiling face of their father, a little reminder of him to sit upon their bed side tables and watch over them while they dream.
I was grateful to her for that gift, but at the same time I could not bring myself to look at the picture.
I am the one who took it. While standing at the top of a fern laced mountain wrapped in the moist air of Hawaii. I remember telling him to say “hula girl” so he would smile big.
Well as it always is….mother fate held cards that I could not see and she gingerly played them when I was least expecting it.
In my cleaning I picked up the frame and dusted the glass and in that moment, our eyes caught. I looked into that silly little frame and got caught in the eyes of the man that I had loved for most of my life.
In that second he was there….and the familiarity of him flowed upon me.
The house was quiet and the kids were all in bed. The moon was hung just outside the livingroom window and I was there, alone……except for Alan.
In his eyes I was carried back to when we were dating, the night he proposed, the moments we laid in bed and laughed till we could not breathe and tears bled from our eyes. Long hot afternoons when I would watch for his car to pull in the drive….the million and one times during the day I would try to think of something I needed to tell him…..just so I had an excuse to call and hear his voice.
My Alan…..I remembered.
All of those feelings come rushing in as the flood gate that is distraction usually keeps them at bay and I found myself suddenly sobbing.
I could not breath. My body crumpled to the floor as a rag doll and I held that picture in my hands, looking into those eyes and I just let it all go.
My body physically hurt from the release. It hurt from hours and days and weeks and months of pushing the pain somewhere where sting could not be felt. But as with all things…..it must come to be.
You have to feel it and lay with it and cry with it….to allow it to go.
So that night got me to thinking. There is a balance in this world, there is.
So those moments of such tremendous suffering and sorrow and pain must be balanced. There is a reason I am here walking this path. There are lessons that I have learned and things to share with others and my job is to learn, to watch, to grow and to be able to take the lessons of my life and use them.
Wouldn’t it be a shame to suffer and hurt and endure it and then take all of the lessons and just sneak off to my own little corner and not share the lessons so that someone else might learn something and not have to wade through the same darkness.
If I can look at another and say…I know where you are. I know how you hurt. I know how you feel….to be able to to that is an immense gift and to that I say….. give me more. Teach me more. Lead me through more.
My courage and strength are enough. My heart that longs for better not only for myself and my children but for all the people I love….is enough.
These moments of our lives are gone in the twinkling of an eye. Almost two years since Alan took his life. Two years.
The thing to remember is that life marches on….ready or not. Two years and then three and then five….they will pass. It is you deciding where you want to be when that time is up….that is your choice. I know that I never want to look back and see a weak girl who did not give the very most she could give….
I just wrote a dear friend and I am going to share the words I wrote…..”I know this sounds incredibly silly…..but when I have no money and I am stressing about bills and braces and house payments and money….that is when I give a 20 dollar bill to the homeless guy on the corner. When I am so tired I think i will die…that is when I go shovel my neighbors walk…..when I dont think I can possible take another breath I go run six miles.
Just to remind myself that I am alive. That I in fact am here for a reason. That I am much stronger then I ever knew and that this life is worth living….and worth living well.”
That is the gift tucked deep in the matters of the heart. The gift we all have been given. The gift of learning to survive, and not only survive….but in not only saving yourself….save another.
And the dance of a new year…..sweeps me away
So here we go.
A new year.
As my mind falls back upon the moments of 2009, I am shrouded with memories of moments that made me proud of the woman I am and moments that cause my eyes to fall to the floor, in shame.
A year ago this day found me just beginning my journey at school. Found me a little more broken a lot more unsure of my footing and not really sure that all the pain was worth it.
This is still after all just a story of a girl.
I want very much to say a “simple” girl from Logan Utah, but if you know me at all…..there is truly nothing simple about me.
Last year was sprinkled with moments full of fake boob inserts, and smashed out car windows, and eccentric teachers and moments that reminded me that even when the sky is the darkest…there is always reason to laugh.
I was bound in moments frosted with blessings. Winning the Soroptomist Award, the first semester of gettint straight A’s…..and watching my babies heal a little more every day.
I always rather thought the whole new year thing was rather cliche. After all if you were not already striving to be that person you want to be…..a date in the year is not going to change anything.
But having tasted the bitter waters of the past two years….finding myself laying on the hard bathroom floor, sobbing myself to sleep, having hurt more then I even imagined a person could hurt and still walk around and face the day, it is good to have a new start.
God meant it to be that way.
I am so in love with the seasons of the year and I use to think it was a metaphor for our lives….born in the spring and death in the winter….baby to elderly.
I see now with eyes that are more clear. There is not only but one season of our life….every year is a season and a pallet for change.
Every year….we are born in the Spring and we have the whole year ahead of us, laid out. Flawless and white it holds the allure of a million possibilities, a gift to carry forward the good things in your life and a precious chance to change the things that you know need changing.
Then Summer…..warm and ripe and a time to work hard. A time to be brave and take chances and risks, to have the courage to make changes in your life and changes in that person who is looking back at you, from inside the mirror.
Long days when the pansies that line the floor of my fathers greenhouses, stretch with their little faces and follow the sun.
A time to play and laugh and take a moment and lay on the cool grass and remember that though this life is hard, and it is so hard sometimes, that this is all here that we may have joy. Joy…..think about that word. We are here that we may have JOY.
I think there is happiness sprinkled all about us….we are the ones that focus on the sad, and the ugly, and the imperfections in one another. We choose to ignore the watercolor shades of the sunset and focus on the crack in the sidewalk.
Then Fall, my favorite of the seasons…..A time to harvest. A time to not only take note of the accomplishments of the past year, but a time to gather in your fruits, mine are my children, and see how much they have grown and changed. How their hair is a little longer, their bodies a little taller and their minds hungry for the stories of the world.
The colors of fall are warm and the feeling is tepid. There is comfort…and peace and a readying for winter to rise and take her place.
And so she does…..with the first silent snow fall of the season. The coldness moves in and with it arrives silence and a precious time to sit and reflect. A retracing in your mind of the steps your feet carried you through the last year. Fingerprints of yourself that were left behind not only on situations but on people….hoping they were left in places that were good….and if not, a chance to try again.
I am learning that life is never going to be simple. It is never going to just flow along without the smooth stones to dance about…..but I am also learning that I would not have it any other way.
So as this year begins a new….this little girl finds herself still standing.
Take a moment to take it all in. Good or bad, filled with immense happiness or riddled with unimaginable sorrow…..the last year of this life was a gift, and here you are…..much like me……..
Still standing.
May this new year bring you more joy then you could even conceive existed…..bring you trials that challenge the strength of your heart….. opportunities to give more of yourself then you ever thought you could give….and love. More love then pools in your eyes can take in.
We find ourselves in the spring of another year…..write your stories well.
moments with my mother…..
How quickly I again, was brought back to that place, where I began almost two years ago.
Tuesday afternoon I was home, getting ready to meet my “muse” who was in town for a short stay, and the message sought me out.
News that my mother was very ill and that she was being admitted to the hospital. Three hours away in Idaho Falls.
All at once that war with loss and death and fear that I have been fighting against, returned and raised its angry head and with one motion, carried my breath from me.
The last two years were suddenly sucked from beneath me and I was once again standing at the top of the staircase in Summerwood, hearing the words “he is gone.”
Soon I found myself driving that lone stretch of highway that leads to Idaho Falls. Dull flickers of light that illuminated the faces of strangers as I passed them by watching their headlights be swallowed in the darkness.
The sins of that road to Idaho: flatness, emptiness, a necessary acceptance of things in my life that cannot be changed, a night sky heavy with the last words of Alan’s life……..and perhaps that of my mother’s.
I thought my body should have adapted more quickly to the cry of probable tragedy, but it was wrapped in fear and my mouth shook as I tried to hold the screaming in.
I use to once love that ride, as you love a familiar friend, who once again finds their way into your life. I loved how on a clear day, you could swear you could see into forever. The curves and bends of the road, beautiful like a woman back, winding hidden in the bluffs that carried you into Idaho. I knew every mile, every slumping hill and every reaching tree line. Yet, the familairty that once held me, now rejected my impending advance, as three hours held me prisioner in a steel box.
I spoke my words aloud and then watched them as the hung in the darkness about my head. Words filled with a soft wash of fear and regret and promises made to God, anything to get me to the next mile marker which in turn, closer to my mother.
She is resting now. I can close my eyes and remember the familiar sound of her. Almost as if I were once again tucked inside her womb, carefully under her heart, where her gentle rhymythic breathing once soothed me to sleep.
