Forged Steel v. Evil Bones. En Guarde.
We all have issues with bones. These bones are unique parts of us that are from our childhood or other [character-building] events, or simply because we were born with them. They’re dense as an oak. And they are part of our framework whether we want them or not. Like my big feet, in some ways I’m stuck with them. My particular Evil Bone feeds ugly thoughts of fear and suspicion and negativity when I’m not looking. Suddenly I hear a voice of doubt in myself or in my husband or an expectation of someone else’s behavior… and I know it came from that ugly extra bone. The one that hardened when I was 12. When my warped sense of love relationships with men, and the insecurity that wants me to feel control, was most likely solidified. HOWEVER Though these...
Read MoreThe Tiers of Sin
One of the significant slivers of conditioning that I’ve had to wrestle as a shattered-and-redeemed woman, is many years of training that sin has tiers. Sort of like a small, medium and double-triple-XL spectrum of sin measurement. Unfortunately when I learned the beautiful gift of confession, it was apparently attached to a commensurate punishment, which of course, meant my 12-year-old brain would simply pre-calculate the right level of sin to confess. Easy. Sorrowfully tell just enough to be believable but don’t tell the part about that really bad cuss word I test drove on the playground last week. Sin had tiers. Yea, I didn’t get it. So, if my long dance with deception (fast forwarding now) was something closer to double-triple XXL, does that make...
Read MoreVintage Reels, Clumsy Truth, Freedom
A new day. After several weeks of spinning activity, crazy fun and heartbreaking change, Jack and I are on our own with no activity. Perfect. Strategic Idea: a week of healthy consumption and no screens. Adventure. First: we dive into my office downstairs to explore some family history. I teach Jack to thread a 50 year old 16mm projector. (He thinks he already knows.) There’s nothing quite as nostalgic for me as the clicking of film through those gears. Yes, that’s me when I was your age. No that’s not Nana, Grandpa was filming the pretty girl dancing next to Nana. Jack tries to put the people in their proper locations on the family org chart. Ours is particularly challenging. We pull out the 20 year old Sony camcorder and watch tapes of...
Read MoreMom? Scandalous?
Scandalous runs in my family. It goes back for generations. In this fuzzy 1973 snapshot of a few well-mannered, if giddy, English family members, the layers of unheard of behavior would make your hair curl! The woman in the middle: my grandmother. Born in Santiago Chile in 1901, married an Englishman who worked for the BBC. During WWII her husband would leave my grandmother and these two then-infants and return to England. Once the borders re-opened after VE Day, these three journeyed by steamship back to England to find that Dad had started another family. But Granny was a devout converted Catholic (which was a bit daring in those days in England) and refused to grant him a divorce. Scandalous individuality. Granny endured, raising these two jokers on her...
Read MoreScandalous
It seems like a good day to repost this. I got caught shoplifting when I was 18 years old. I know, I know. REALLY late bloomer. The security guard’s cold hand clenched my left wrist as I attempted to leave the store without paying for the pair of jeans that hid in my bag. The crime took place in a Hudson’s department store in 1980 in a middle-class suburb of Detroit and my exposure to crime up to this point had been, oh, nil. Actually, I was acting on the pressure of a certain girl-not-friend who aggressively befriended me after high school, so I went along for the ride. Her dad was a Cadillac executive and I learned that she desperately needed friends and attention, which she habitually got by pulling daring and rebellious stunts like shoplifting...
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