Ah Ha!

I have a very old and dear friend who likes to call me now and then to tell me how bad things are in her life. They are very strange conversations, but I love my friend, she has taught me so much. She taught me such a wonderful lesson today, I hope I can hold it in my heart forever because I think it's something I'v needed to learn for a very long time. Our conversation went something like this:

Friend: Hi, how are you?

Me: I'm good how are you?

Friend: I'm sick again, just like I always am. Sick, sick, sick.

Me: I hope you feel better soon, it seems to be going around.

Friend: Are you sick?

Me: Nope, but Boy A missed school yesterday. Both boys have been vaccinated against H1N1 though, so I'm not too worried, we just have colds. If I have time, I'll go get the seasonal flu vaccine today. Have you gotten vaccinated yet? (She's in a high risk group).

Friend: No I don't believe in vaccinations. I do believe in wacko home remedies. Put Vicks on Boy A's feet and blah, blah, blah. You didn't ask for my advice, though did you?

Me: Hey, did I tell you I'm going to have some designers come over to my house and give me recommendations for paint colors? I'm so excited! Real designers! In my house!

Friend: Your house is trashed.

Me: No it's not. There's nothing wrong that can't be fixed. There are no holes in the walls, no abused woodwork, it's beautiful, just needs some new paint and polish. I can totally fix it, I know I can. The designers bring huge paint chips the size of paintings and you can carry them around the house, look at them in different lighting conditions, live with a color for awhile before committing.

Friend: Whatever. Your house is really old and terrible and you need to scrub it into oblivion and that is too overwhelming to even think about. Life is too hard, and really sucky. And Thanksgiving is a waste of my time, I have to go spend it with people who don't even know how to cook. You shouldn't be bringing 4 dishes to your Thanksgiving, they are taking advantage of you.

Me: Hey, why so negative? Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Friend: Sounds like you read The Secret.

Me: to myself (Only as a courtesy to you because you thought it would help ease my suffering.)

Friend: I can tell you don't want to talk to me so I'm going to hang up now.

My friend actually has pretty good health, if she followed her doctor's instructions she'd feel better, but she won't, she doctor shops going to different doctors, the more alternative the better, always looking for the magic cure. Of course, none of it works because what's wrong with her is her attitude, but she won't help herself in that regard. My friend has a loving husband who gives her everything she wants, she owns her own home, is surrounded by her family and friends to go do stuff with. She doesn't have to make money to support the family because her husband can take care of that. But she's the most miserable person I know and that includes friends who are battling cancer, watching someone they love die, friends who have lost jobs or are about to lose jobs, friends who are losing businesses or about to lose businesses and their homes, friends who have handicapped children, friends who have lost children. And here she is, oblivious to it all, convinced she is life's biggest victim.

I had a huge Ah Ha! moment after I got off the phone with her.

How many times have I been in this exact same mood, seeing only bad even when it's not even there? Refusing to see all the good there is in my life in this very moment. I'm utterly embarrassed to admit it, it's been alot in the last 2 years.

But NO MORE. I am utterly FED UP with that kind of nonsense. I actually chuckled when I got off the phone. Poor friend. But me? I'm cleaning up my act.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone.

Play Hard, Sleep Deeply

Boy A was the Baby Who Slept. All I had to do was feed him, change his diaper, put him in a snuggly suit and lay him down. As soon as he was horizontal, he was asleep. Still the same 9 years later.

Woman Rows Across Atlantic Ocean

The last 2 nights I've been at the Banff Festival of Mountain Films World Tour. Every year the festival goes on tour with a few films that celebrate mountain culture and the values of exploring not only the planet, but what it means to be a human being living today. One of the films I really liked was a mostly self-shot film by an everyday Englishwoman, Roz Savage.

Roz had a job as a management consultant in downtown London and a marriage that was unraveling after 11 years. She decided to reset her life and take on the adventure of rowing a rowboat across the Atlantic Ocean. She was not an athlete, an adventurer, or even a rower. She just wanted to change her life and find out what she was capable of. She's incredibly inspirational. Here are links to her YouTube videos.

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Boxes of Terror

I've been caught off guard in odd moments this week. Glancing into a clear bin of wedding photos I thought, "hmmm, that box can go downstairs for storage." Then I thought, "wow, I don't have a clenched stomach and I'm not going to cry. I'm just going to put that box away for the boys."

It has taken about a year and a half to get to this point.

We moved into this house in January and our boxes were unloaded into the glassed-in front porch that used to be my mother's sewing shop. I unpacked just a few things. I couldn't bear to open and look in the boxes because I didn't know what I'd find, and I was pretty sure whatever was in there was going to hurt me in some way. The boxes were detritus from a broken life and I just couldn't bear to be reminded of how broken I really was.

The farm had sold in about 10 days, catching all of us off guard. The closing was 12 days, I think. About 3 weeks from, Oh my god I have to sell the farm to sitting at a long conference table in a depressing office building somewhere in Beaverton signing pages and pages of documents I was too numb to read. Even now I don't remember the closing, just the depressing color of the carpet in the hallway of that building. I remember noticing how the building didn't have any molding. Later I couldn't bear to go into the realtor's office to get my copies of the documents. To this day I don't have them.

I've been terrified of the boxes. They sit out there at the end of the house emanating a sinister vibe. What's in them? Can I take the whole lot, unexamined, to Goodwill? They occupy a place that's going to be my studio, but even that promise of reward hasn't been enough to overcome my fear of the boxes.

We've lived without a lot of useful things like cookbooks and muck boots, because I just couldn't deal with the boxes. Every now and then I'd feel ashamed about the situation and I'd go out there and try. One day I opened a box and found hay. I fell to the floor sobbing. Someone had packed some of my hay. Suddenly the boys were 3 years old again and I had the truck in the neighbor's field and was dragging every 75 lb. bale up a ramp into the truck by myself with the little guys trying to push. I thought my belly would split open with the effort. But damn, it was MY hay bought with MY wool money and I hauled every flake to the sheep twice a day all winter long. I didn't have nice clothes and I didn't have a husband who would make love to me, or even use my name, but I had enough hay for my animals and I had done it myself. It seemed like all I had then were the boys, the animals, and the bit of ground we walked on. Then all I had were the boys.

So here we are 16 months after leaving the farm. My divorce has been final for 6 months. I have sole legal custody. I have fleeces from my flock and 2 buckets of angora from the rabbit herd. I have work I enjoy. I have some friends and my family. I have a beautiful house to live in. And this week, I looked in the last box.

There's still a lot of work to do, but there are no unexamined boxes holding painful memories any more. I'm not all the way there yet, though. At OFFF I deliberately stayed out of the barns. I won't go back to the farm or that neighborhood for any reason. I don't want to know how the new owners have fixed it up, I don't want to see their sheep on what is now their pasture. I've also had a hard time spinning my Shetland fleece. I just don't want to spin it, I just want to know that I have it. If I spin it, then I won't have it any more, and there's no way to get more. I can't have my own sheep. And I still can't talk much about that time, even now tonight I'm crying as I write.

Time does heal all wounds I guess. For me it has taken the edge off a series of wrenching losses and I'm beginning to think there may be an end to the pain of divorce after all.

The Buddhists say greed, hate and delusion are the mental states that cause suffering. I've now learned that greed and hate mean something other than what I thought. Greed, in this context, means the compulsion to hang on to something, in my case, the past, the farm, the way of life I had. And of course I suffer because I don't have that any more.

Hate, in this context, means pushing away something unwanted, an aversion to something. I've had an aversion to the boxes, to the divorce, and so of course, more suffering.

In the Buddhist way of thinking, to grasp and cling to what is gone, to push away what is, causes suffering. The best practice is to fully accept what is happening in the moment it is happening, neither repressing or acting out. I understand, but I can't quite get there. I still have some aversion to the boxes and the memories they evoke. I still blame my ex-husband for what he did to the kids and me.

For the first time though, I feel like there is at least the possibility of an end to the suffering of divorce. I think I can see the light at the end of a very long and very dark tunnel.

What will be my studio and yarn shop, some day in the not too distant future, I think.

Post-Divorce Apocalypse On A Wing and A Prayer

Sometimes I have funny prayers. Not funny, like, "Hey God great joke, love the locusts." Just not my usual, "Send a good man I can love. And a bit more income. And it SUCKS that Suzie has cancer and Margie is really sick. Fix it. Thank you."

At OFFF in September a lovely woman came and said she was bummed about some indigo yarn she had bought from me at Madrona and it was crocking. Really bad. I was kind of stunned, for several reasons, but she left before I could sort out in my mind what to do. So for the rest of the show I was looking for her, but of course I couldn't find her. It bothered me a great deal that there was someone who had spent money and didn't get good value, so I prayed for God to help me find her so I could somehow make it right. I didn't think it would work, since there hasn't been a good man, more income or cessation of human suffering around here. But it did. Jessica has new yarn and I am so much happier and relieved. It feels like a little piece of my life, this little thing, has been cleaned up and put right.

If you've been reading the blog for awhile you might think I'm pretty religious, I dunno, maybe I am in my own way, but I think of myself as The Reluctant Christian. Who Would Rather Be a Buddhist But Their Music Is Impossible To Sing Along With. So I pick and choose, using what works and ignoring the rest. Meditating helps me sleep better. As far as prayer, I think what the hell, it couldn't hurt and maybe, just maybe, I'll get some help with this huge ball of whathehellever that is my life. Is there any single working mother raising kids by herself who doesn't pray? Probably not. So every night I throw my desperation up to heaven and hope it gets sorted out up there, so I can sleep for a few hours.