eleven bee

When I was younger (and singler), I would occasionally and halfheartedly worry that my life would degenerate into a Cathy comic strip.  “Ack!  I’m single and my thighs are getting fatter!  Ack!  My boyfriend won’t commit!  Ack!  My mom won’t stop nagging me! Ack! Ack! Ack!”

I’m proud to report that I have dodged that Cathy bullet.  Yes, swimming suit season still bums me out, but otherwise, I’m living the dream.  (Snort.)  Married.  Two kids.  House.  Job.  Yada yada.

Now, however, I worry that my life maybe following the path of Everyone Loves Raymond.  Here’s an example:  we have a bamboo cutting board that has started to warp a little.  It’s bowed, length-wise.  Charley insists on putting the cutting board on the counter so that the curved edges point up.  This. Drives. Me. Crazy.   Every time that I need to use the cutting board, I have to flip the thing over, because otherwise it rocks.  I’ve got vegetables to julienne!  Proteins to chop!  What am I going to to with a chopping board that rocks?

So I flip it over so that it’s slightly curved, but stable.  I chop whatever it is that needs chopping, clean up the board, and set it back on the counter so that it doesn’t wobble.  And then the next evening when I begin my chopping ritual again, the cutting board is back to rocking back and forth on the counter.  I sigh.  I flip it over.  And begin again.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The interesting (maybe) part, is that we’ve never said anything about it.  Instead we go about silently flipping, un-flipping, and re-flipping this fundamentally flawed cutting board.  Part of me thinks it’s worth bringing up one of these days.  The other part of me just wants to toss the fucking thing out and get us a shiny new — straight — cutting board.

It’s not nearly as sexy as I had envisioned my life would turn out.  But then on the other hand…  Wait.  There is no other hand.

Here’s the thing about kids:  they keep you humble.  And I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: the act of becoming a parent makes you profoundly aware of just how much love you’re capable of feeling.   It’s life altering, of course.  Of course. (Duh.)

I like to remind myself of the fact that these two little guys have changed my life for the better, particularly on those rough days  – like today – when they drive me batty.

It’s interesting to me to think about how different things would be if I had become a mother eariler, or later, in my life.  As it stands, I jumped into the motherhood pool right around the time that I was getting a handle on my so-called adult life.  Just when I getting my land legs.

And then *woosh.*

Parenthood comes along and gets you all discombobulated again.  I guess it’s just life’s way of showing you that you’ll always have new things to learn, new roles to master, new challenges to face.

Because at the time, I was starting to feel kind of in control of things.  And then I became a mom, and slowly learned that as in control as I thought I once was, now…?  Not so much.  I have changed into much more of a choose-your-battles kind of gal, which, it turns out, I kind of like.

Plus whenever I get to thinking that I’m “all that,” I come home to boys who know, with absolute certainty, that their immediate needs, their accomplishments, their failures, are more important than mine.  For now, they’re right.

Our South Korean homeys have come up with something that freaks me out to no end.  In an effort to stave off high suicide rates, and stimulate productivity in the workplace, South Korean “entrepreneurs are conducting controversial forums designed to teach clients how to better appreciate life by simulating death.”

This involves the relatively benign exercise of writing of wills, or even drafting your own obituary — something western life-coaches have been recommending for years, as a way of honing in on your life goals, which I kind of get.  (“Evelyn lived a full and happy life, never afraid to take risks.  Her motto was ‘let’s see what life has in store for me…’  Her biggest joy was seeing her two sons, Colin and Kai grow in to caring and responsible men.  Remembered for being…” yada yada yada.)

But above and beyond this, this South Korean practice includes coffins.  And the getting into of coffins. And the closing of coffin lids!

There’s also a Facebook application that (jokingly) purports to be able to predict “when and how the death will catch you!”

Seems to me there’s a whole lot of planning and preparation going into something that’s going to happen whether we plan for it or not, no?

I’m fascinated by the people around me.  I live in a pretty pleasant, easy neighborhood.  (Hence the “Stepfordton” moniker.)  My neighbors are attractive, successful, intelligent, well bred family people.  On the surface, everything just seems so, um, perfect.

And maybe this goes without saying but “perfect” is boring.

As it turns out, almost every pleasant person that I have met has an interesting story to tell.  There’s a surprising, and delightful, depth to the people I have come to know in the three years that we’ve lived here.  As much as I like to poke fun at the Pleasant-ville-y-ness of it all, I do really enjoy it, and honestly, I am rarely bored by the people here.

Until recently, the whole idea of making anonymous donations to one cause or another baffled me.  Perhaps because I’ve always been attracted, in manic-obsessive-moth-to-a-flame-fashion, to the limelight.   But with the recent outpouring of support for the people struggling in Haiti, it’s starting to make sense to me.

Everybody, and I mean everybody, has put together some kind of something to benefit Haiti.  And already, some rabble rousers, some small minded rabble rousers, are pointing fingers.  (“Why is Barack Obama directing people to the whitehouse.org website to make donations?  How do we even know that that money will make it to Haiti?”)   Some legitimate questions have come up about existing charitable non-profits.  (“Wyclef Jean’s organization has a questionable track record…”)  Celebrities are flying supplies out personally in their own jet planes, singers are donating concert profits, making sizable personal contributions, and encouraging others to do the same.  My employer, our children’s day care provider, my friend’s restaurant down the road — each of these have created matching donation programs.

I think it’s all so important to do.  The magnitude of the suffering, the devastation in Haiti is truly hard to comprehend.  And I think it says more about me than about anything else, that I’m slightly put off by the public showing of this generosity of spirit.  Who am I to question the motives, the sincerity of these gestures?  And, frankly, the situation is so dire out there, that, really, who cares why anyone does anything good to help, as long as they do?

I react the same way towards colored ribbons and rubber bracelets.  And random calls for Facebook slacktivism, for that matter.

Why, I wonder, am I more inclined to this more pessimistic interpretation of these social movements?  Why not be inspired or hopeful?

Here, for example, is a pictures of a really nice, small gesture organized by a Unitarian Universalist church in town:

This is one of those pod dealios, filled with tents and the like that folks have donated to have shipped to Haiti.  This, for some reason, touched me.  Seconds after I took this picture of the many tents that my fellow Denverites have donated, I over-heard the man tending to the pod talking to another woman about getting better media coverage of this effort.  I loved the idea that this tent thing was a small but tangible, grass-roots, ordinary-people kind of thing that I had heard about from a neighbor.  You know, word of mouth, without having been sullied by the media.

More and more, I’m seeing the appeal of quiet acts of kindness — no matter how big or small.

And on that note, here’s a list of ways to help.

When I was ten years old, Tiffany Murray, my next door neighbor, took me aside in Ms. Whitman’s fifth grade class to tell me that her friend Jackie was calling me out.  This might have concerned me more if I had had any idea what it meant to be called out.  Called out where, I remember thinking.  Out to the hall?  Does she have something to give me?  Gosh that’s nice of her — I mean, I barely even know her…

Turns out when someone calls you out, it means they want to fight you.

At ten years old, I was the smallest girl in my class.  I weighed like forty pounds.  Jackie, on the other hand, was a bigger girl and she was one year older.  Furthermore, there was no real reason why Jackie should want to beat me up.  As far as I can remember, we never actually spoke.

I mentioned to my teacher that this Jackie person apparently wanted to hurt me, she called in Jackie and gave her a good talking to, and nothing ever came of any of this, but I’m now wondering if I haven’t sidestepped some important adolescent milestone.

I bring this up only because today I’ve been socked twice in the left eye.  Once when Kai bounced his shooter marble off the floor of the playroom and then straight into my eye with remarkable force.  I think this may be the first time that either of my boys have physically hurt me to the point of tears.

And then later on this evening as I was getting out of the car I somehow managed to clip myself again in the same eye with my car keys.

I have a slight suspicion that I may end up with at least a modest little shiner tomorrow morning.  And a part of me wishes that I would be able to explain the black eye with macho description of some kind of sexy bar fight.  The truth — marbles, and my own clumsiness, for god’s sake — is much less exciting.

Guess I’ll just have to add this one to my bucket list.

So here are just a few things to help get started again…

Uh.  WTF was I going to write here?  Good god, I’m out of shape.

I’ve been thinking about nothing lately.  I mean, actively thinking about nothing — about the beautiful, precious nothingness that is it all.  I was talking to a girlfriend of mine a week or so ago about how surprisingly okay I’ve become with the idea that none of this really matters, but I quickly got the sense that my message had gotten kind of garbled along the way.  What I had thought would come across as a wise bit of zen-ness actually turned out to be a darker and not un-pessimistic slice of existential nihilism.

I generally try to avoid talking about religion or politics, even with friends whose positions along these lines I believe might be similar to my own.  Partly because if they do share my views, well then, how boring would that be?  And if they don’t, well… I don’t know.  As open minded as I consider myself to be, I don’t think I’d necessarily want to risk getting into it with people with whom I want to remain friends.

But the other night when I kind of casually mentioned that, no, I hadn’t snapped out of the “nothing really matters and that’s okay” phase, I was reminded of a third reason why I don’t typically broach these fairly personal topics:  because it leaves me open for being misunderstood.  It leaves me slightly vulnerable.  (To… to what, exactly?)

So I’m taking my quazi-homegrown mishmash spin on the closest thing I’ve ever gotten to something I might actually call spirituality, and I’m going back in the closet.  (But as I head back underground, I’m bringing with me my copy of Mindfulness in Plain English — thanks to my friend S.  )

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Also.  On another note, it’s just recently occurred to me that it’s entirely possible that those people who seem unbelievably, um, obnoxious might actually be putting on a front.  It’s a sham.  Or, at least, it might be.  For some reason, I find this comforting.

image from:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/81015532@N00/