Water water everywhere...

Lets talk about water.

Water is on my mind today.  It’s been raining for a couple of days now, in the dutiful, focused way that it rains in Arkansas.  Lots of water, coming straight down as if it had a deadline to meet. I’m astonished by how quickly it comes down, and then how quickly it drains away.  The soil here is so rocky and porous that the water just vanishes, seeping down into all those layers of limestone, I suppose. I imagine swollen underground rivers rushing through the dark.

At CB, located as we are at the bottom of a ravine, a little water turns into a lot of water, and a lot of water turns into a river, rushing through the site and filling the lower pond. This morning I walked over to the north bridge to watch the water pouring away downstream on the north end of the property, and to see it coming over the weir under the bridge.  It makes a dull roar, and falls about five feet.  This water isn’t pretty:  it’s coming down through the south pond above it, carrying topsoil, mulch, and construction debris.  It’s muddy and has junk floating in it.  But it’s cool, nevertheless, to see the lower pond full and get a taste of what the museum will look like in real life when everything is finished.

Last night the water as accompanied by serious lightning and thunder.—enough to scare Grayson and all three dogs into my bed. It was quite a night.  Thunder Booming, Grayson stuck to me like tape with his fingers in his ears, and the dogs climbing all over both of us in their attempts to find someplace they perceived as “safe.” Kobi finally chose to squeeze down under the covers between us. Roxy spent about half an hour with her elbows up on the bed next to my face, her own face shoved as far as she could get it under my neck. Flower, usually the one who tries to sleep on my head in a storm, was unusually calm, choosing to merely drape herself over our feet and pant hard enough to vibrate the whole bed.

After struggling with the horde for awhile—Kobi changing her position every few minutes and occasionally burrowing under the blanket to dig at the sheet like she was trying to get to China, and Roxy jumping up on the bed and stepping on everyone and starting a growlfest with Flower, and Grayson hollering “Ow!  My Nuts!’ a few times, we both got tickled and dissolved into giggles.  All of this at 4 a.m. 

The thunder finally let up around 5 or so, and we all went back to sleep.  It was all fun and games until the alarm went off at 6.  We were a pair of ass-draggers then, I assure you.

More thunder this morning.  And more rain. It makes me wonder how much snow we’ll get this winter!

There are many percs to my new job. Some of which, until the museum opens in November, I can't really even mention... confidentiality agreement and all... but there are some that are safe to talk about now.

One of the things that always refreshes me... brings my patience back from the brink when I'm frustrated, lifts my spirit if I'm blue, or gives me perspective when I'm stuck... is the forest. It's all around us there at CB:  120 acres of it.  Lichen-painted rocks and cold springwater bubbling out of the ground, great trees arching overhead, and the sweet hush of the woods.  Unfortunately, at this time, it's impossible to get away from the construction noise and dust, even though on the trails the sound is certainly muted. But the time will come when the caterpillar excavators will be gone, the ponds will be full of water, and the woods will fill with silence again.  I look forward to that.

For a couple of days last week the staff were all obliged to park at a church a few blocks away and take one of the trails in to the museum every morning.  The crew wass laying one last layer of asphalt on the museum's main drive. Though I feel for those for whom this is a physical hardship, for me it was a blessing.  It was like a benediction to walk through the cool, quiet woods to get to work. I wish it were a longer walk, rather than the 10 minutes or so it takes to follow the winding dogwood trail.

There are fewer butterflies now.  The butterflies were one of the first things I noticed on moving here.  They were numerous, large and colorful, floating like escaped bits of tissue paper everywhere.  The toads that have populated our neighborhood under the streetlights of an evening are dwindling in number as well.  Whether they're tucking in for the season, or being devoured by predators, I won't speculate.

Just this week the trees began to turn in earnest. It's such a wonderful time of year:  warm and bright most days, cool at night. This weekend I took Kobi to an area called Slaughter Pen Hollow-- it's a hiking and mountain bike trails area, nicely wooded, but not remote. We saw a group of about four deer and one enormous owl that peered down on us from above as if speculating as to its ability to carry off Kobi.  I guess it decided against it, because it flew away.

Today we have had rain again.  Rain is something Arkansas take seriously, as I may have mentioned before. It rains and rains. I've heard we can get up to two feet of snow here, as well.  That will make Grayson happy, at least.

Grayson called me from home today when he got off the bus. He was in tears, which is extremely rare these days. My heart about stopped in my chest. Kobi has been getting out of the yard every day and I was terrified that she had been hit by a car. But no, he called to tell me he'd been bullied.

All my Momma Bear instincts came roaring to the fore. "By Whom!?" I demanded to know.  He doesn't know. Some kid at school. Not someone he'd ever seen before. The kid was pulling on a stuff "Angry Bird" Grayson wears attached to his back pack, and he wouldn't stop.  I couldn't figure out at first why he was crying, but then I realized that the simple fact that G couldn't make this kid stop bothering him showed him how helpless he was against the kid. He was crying from frustration and a sense of being trapped.  He said he wanted to swear at the kid, or kick him, but he knew then he'd get in more trouble than his antagonist. And he was right.

The real problem for Grayson is that he's essentially a very good kid.  He's kind and considerate and well behaved. A rule follower.  Like his mother. It incenses us that someone would just disregard a reasonable request purely for the purpose of being annoying. What recourse do we have in a civilized world when people don't act civilized?

I said I gave him free reign to get in the kid's face and tell him to stop being a dork. To flip him off if he had to.  But what tools do we really have against someone like that, someone who just wants to get a response?  My grandfather used to say "If you don't want 'em to get your goat, don't tell 'em where you tied it up."  And I've translated that to Grayson as "If you don't want them to push your buttons, don't put up a big sign that says 'Don't Push.'" but the world pushes our buttons, anyway. What's a good kid to do?

Angry birds, indeed!

Little Wild Animals

Our neighborhood cat had kittens a few weeks ago. 

She's not really a stray... more like communally owned, inasmuch as she is more or less housed, and certainly adequately fed, and she's friendly with people.  But nobody has full responsibility for her, which means she has no healthcare, which includes, of course, spaying.  Apparently she's had a litter a year in one of the garages along the block, popping out 5 to 7 kittens every summer.  The neighborhood is good about feeding and housing and finding homes for the kitties, but nobody wants to pony up to have the poor old girl spayed.

This litter started out at seven, but we lost one last week to unknown causes, so the number is down to six.  They mostly live in our next door neighbor's garage, but occasionally the mommacat attempts to relocate them to the next garage down.  Those neighbors are in the process of moving, so they move the babies back.  Poor little guys keep getting dragged by the next back and forth across the yard.

Mostly their healthy, fat little balls of fluff.  But a couple have had eye issues. Their eyes get gummy and seal shut, so I go over every evening with a warm damp rag and check them out. I soak their eyes open if their gummed over, and give them a general clean-up if needed. There's one I've been a bit worried about:  a little runty white one whose eyes looked pink and cloudy when I get them open.  And they seem sunken in the sockets.

Anyway, I worry over him.  Over all of them, really.  We'll need to find homes for them, and everyone knows the world does not need seven more kitties.  When we first moved in, there were two wild cats semi-inhabiting our back yard, until the dogs made a go for them, cornering the smallest against the fence. I got there in time to avoid injury to either side, but the kitten was wet all over and spitting in terror.  They haven't returned... wisely.

Kobi escaped the yard and went next door last week to check out the mommacat and babies.  I heard her yelp and saw her come out, tail down and eyes squinting from the slash she received across the face.  She had it coming.  She too has not returned, and I hope it keeps her from harrassing the kittens any further.  But they are only just now big enough to begin exploring a bit (when their eyes are not gummed shut).  So I hope there's no trouble when they are big enough to be bouncing around the yard like fluffy balls of bait.

And that day is coming up very soon.  Last night at about 10:30, my neighbor rang my doorbell, and when I opened the door she just said "you gotta come see this."

Well, all the kitties were out in the driveway, chasing and pouncing and rolling over one another. I had not seen them so active, and in fact just early that evening I'd had to pry open the eyes of two of them. But they were all wide-eyed, healthy and playful, with clearly not the slightest fear of people.  So I sat down right there on the concrete and let them all pile into my lap.

There is just not much that a lapful of 4-week-old kittens can't make you feel better about.  Not that I have any reason to feel sorry for myself just now, but I do sometimes get a little lonely.  But these little balls of play reminded me again of how good life can be.

For one thing: I have a neighbor who is nice enough to adopt a litter of homeless kittens, and a neighborhood that is nice enough to make sure they are fed and safe and healthy. And people who recognize the value of a lapfull of kittens enough to be willing to ring my doorbell at 10:30 at night to be sure I get a chance to enjoy it.  There's a lot to be thankful for.

UPDATE:
This is an old post that I forgot to upload.
The kitties are all thriving.  The momma moved them again to a new garage (possibly to get away from all the kids playing with them all the time), and the nice Cat Lady that lives there took in the whole litter and the mother, so they are all indoors now, cared for and fed.  We haven't seen them since then, but we know where they are.  Again, it's nice to have nice people around.

Return of the Prodigal

Hey there.
Remember me?  I used to hang out here.

There's plenty to update on.  I've relocated to Arkansas, changed jobs.... Settled in. In a way it's surprising how little time it takes to create a New Normal. On the other hand, Bentonville is a lot like Norman, in the way most small to medium sized towns in the middle of the US are like other small to medium sized towns in the middle of the US. Our ecountry has become curiously homogenous through the magic of Big Box stores, corporations and chains.  So I feel pretty much the same in the Starbucks on 14th street in Bentonville as I did in the Starbucks on Main in Norman.  Even the barrista looks the same.

That's cynical, and I don't mean to be. I do like it here a lot. I like how things are nearby. I like the people and the schools. I like my job. I really really like the landscape. That's probably the best perc of being here. It is really beautiful.  So green. I love Oklahoma, and I'm a plains girl to the bottom of my big, flat, feet.  But I belong in the forest.  I need running water and rocks.  It feels like home here in that respect, as much or more than my home felt.

I'm back to pretty much normal as far as routine goes, as well. The tension and drama of moving and starting a new job have settled down. Fortunately, the drama behind the scenes in my personal life has also settled down. I made peace with the X. (Some might say I cratered, but I did what I needed to do to make the escalating insanity stop.)  I think I've reached a manageable lifestyle with the Boyfriend, who just bought a house in Norman, so he's been busy moving, picking out upholstery fabric and home accessories, which certainly helps take the sting out of my defection to Arkansas. I've even settled into a routine of regular drives to the Missouri border for my weekly wine ration (Benton is a dry county).

I've pretty much gotten the hang of the job. I've learned almost everyone's name, can find my way around the building, and stay busy most of the time.  Sometimes I find I've got four or five projects going, but they're all in review and so I'm in waiting mode.  It's not natural for me.  I don't.... wait.  I'm accustomed to having thirty things going at once. If one project gets stonewalled, I move on to something else. There is no lag time. But here, well... I'm here to do two things: write, and edit. There are other people in charge of updating the web site and Facebook, booking advertisements, making TV appearances, talking with reporters, sizing ads, raising sponsorships, and doing voice overs. Me... I'm the copy writer and grammar police. My Chicago Style manual online is my best friend. It's a strange sort of vaccuum for me. It feels...guilty somehow... like I'm not really doing it right, somehow.

For those who were hoping for some inside scoop about life at the Next Great American Museum, I'm sorry to disappoint. Because the museum doesn't open until November, I've taken a strict Vow of Silence regarding goings on here. Everything is a big Surprise, so you'll just have to wait like everyone else. 

You Shall Not Pass

It seems the universe vacilates on its opinion of me.

First I'm soaring:  receiving the bounty of a new job, a fresh start.  I lose a house and gain a house, I serendipitously meet people who shine a positive light into my life. I feel like Everything is Meant to Be...

Then I'm snatched down as if by the flaming whiplash of the Balrog:  sucked childishly into acrimonious conflict with the X. Blazing into petty sniping with the boyfriend. Circling my office like an anxiety-ridden tiger in a cage, distracted to paralysis by the enormity of my To Do list.  Snapping at my son.  Yesterday my car wouldn't start. My camera stopped working. The external hard drive I purchased to transfer all my photos onto wouldn't format for the computer I'm using.



Today is my next to last day at work.  I have at least three more days worth of stuff to accomplish, and a doctor's appointment this morning to eat up a good hour of the day. 


What gives?  Did I get too cocky?  Too confident? Has the universe turned its back on me?


And as the chaos begins to wind itself up to the point at which I either overcome it or run howling mad through the streets... I have something of an epiphany. Eventually – and sooner rather than later – I will have to give up on getting everything done and just go....  Go.  Throw everything up in the air and run out from under it. Balrog or no Balrog.

"Fly, you fools."

Descending the maelstrom

Tuesday after the holiday weekend, I got up and hit the road by 7 a.m. to drive back to Bentonville and find a place to live. 

Again.

As I needed to be back in Oklahoma City by 6:30 to pick up my son, I had to leave Bentonville by 3 p.m., which means I had approximately 4 hours in town to seek out and secure a place for us to live.  Amazingly enough, I managed it. I stumbled across a house for rent by the owner that we had somehow managed to miss the first time around.  I called the very nice woman who owns it, who just happened to have left her twin baby girls at Mothers Day Out that day, so was able to accommodate my request for an instant showing.

The house was perfect. It's toward the end of a dead-end street, so no zipping through-traffic.  It has a six foot cedar fence all the way around, lots of trees in the back, a big master bedroom with a bow window, a kitchen I could roller skate in (which about all I do in the kitchen, anyway), a big open living room and a gas fireplace. I said "I'll take it."

She hesitated, but I charmed and cajoled, and she said "I just have a good feeling about you.  I'll go ahead and let you have it now. I know you need to get back to Norman."

She just had a good feeling about me.  I just happened to see the sign.  She told me later, as I was handing over the money order for the deposit, that she had told her husband she had a feeling that this time they would rent the house to a single mom.  Me.

Remember when I said that the nice lady with a radio station to God had told me that something good was coming for me? Well, she called yesterday, and told me she had heard I was moving, was happy for my new position, and she knew I'd be happy in it, and she was sure God had blessed me.  I wasn't at all sure that it wasn't HER who had blessed me.  Her faith and goodness seem to rub off on me every time I talk with her, even though I'm not Christian and I don't even really know her very well.  Maybe she truly is tapped into something old and deep.  I don't know.  But she called it.  I hope she keeps me in her prayers on that broadband.

In general I find that this move has shown me the best of people.  It has brought forward kind words from the most seemingly unlikely quarters, and I've been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and congratulations from my colleagues and friends and acquaintances and acquaintances of acquaintances.  My dear friend, Jin, had a party for me on Saturday, and everyone was so nice and asked so many flattering questions about the new job that I began to feel sort of bad for talking about myself. "Yes, it's a beautiful new museum!  Yes, I'm so excited to be going!  Yes, it's wonderful to have been chosen from the many who must have applied!"  Me, me, me...  I began to worry that everyone must think me a terrible conceited ass.  But the whole experience has been one of positive reinforcement and harmonic convergence.  I truly think that I'm experiencing one of those manifestations we read about in the hippy dippy literature.  "Open yourself to the Universe and change will come for you."  I know that when this blog was born of the ashes of Scrawlspace in May, there was no such place – in my experience, anyway – as Bentonville, Arkansas. 

As my last day at the Sam draws near, however, things get pressurized, and my choices get fuzzier.  There is so much to do and I want to do it right – to leave things in proper order, to tie up the loose ends. I know there's no way I'll get it all tied down, but I'm scrambling to try to do so.  Scrambling at home, too, trying to juggle packing and organizing and feeling bad about the time I don't have to spend with family or my boyfriend or friends... arguing by email and text message with the X... and through all of it trying to save up a little special time with Grayson. This is his last week at home before he goes to spend a week and a half with his grandparents in New Mexico and El Paso.  It's his last week in this home, as well, and I'm painfully aware that he's aware that our time here is drawing to a close... that after Friday, the next time we see each other will be in Arkansas.  I'm doing what I can to make the transition as painless as possible, but I'm also under a lot of pressure, and sometimes I'm short tempered or grouchy or unreasonable. 

Yesterday I snapped at him because he was picking at me to help him synch his Nintendo DS with the Wii. Of course, I know nothing about it, plus the wifi is wonky the last few days, and then when I nearly erased his game, he snatched the controller out of my hand and I snapped.  I felt terrible about it instantly, but I made him cry, and I just couldn't apologize enough.  How do you explain grown-up stress to a kid?  There are so many complicated factors to my stew of emotions, I don't fully understand it myself.  I'm excited and fearful. Exhausted and exhilarated. Anxious and ebulient.  As usual, my boy was preternaturally perceptive and kind.  In fact, he was so gentle and solicitous with me all evening that I felt even more guilty about my waspish, un-mom-like behavior. When will I start being the mother I should be and want to be, and stop being this overgrown kid who's in over her head?

In the final days, I just have to keep my head down and keep moving. I know that I asked the Universe for this chance, and now it's up to me to reach out and take it.  Chaos, as I said at the beginning of this blog, is my patron saint.  Out of chaos are all things born. So I just grope my way forward through the maelstrom and have faith I'll come safely – and sanely – through the other side. 

Back to the Drawing Board...

Maybe I jinxed the house, after all.  I got a call from the realtor yesterday that I'd been mysteriously misquoted on the rent.  It was $100 more than my limit.  Sigh.  I could feel the house slipping through my fingers.

Back to the drawing board, then.  There were two other houses we looked at that I could afford.  The best of the two was missing part of a fence along one side, so I volunteered my dad and I to build that fence, if the owner would let us deduct materials from the first month's rent.  Haven't heard about that proposal.  Plan C is a smaller house on a slightly busier street, but if the answer is no on the Fence House, then I'll call the Plan C house and see if it's still available. If it isn't... guess what?  I'm driving back to Bentonville tomorrow morning and truly starting the search over.

Meanwhile, I'm packing my belongings to move them.... somewhere.  I spent almost all day yesterday packing books and closets.  I can't even look in Grayson's room.  When he gets home Tuesday night we have to spend some serious time together, culling things from his vast collection. I told him he could keep the money from any of his stuff he sold in the Garage Sale on Saturday, hoping to motivate the boy to let go of more stuff.  He's got toys he hasn't touched in over a year, plus bins and boxes of what I call "junk" – just random bits of things: Happy meal toys, prizes from birthday parties and Chuck E Cheese, plastic animals, things made of Sculpey, a million high-bounce balls, souvenirs from zoos and museums, trinkets and JUNK.  I'm tempted to pour it all into a big cardboard box and put a "25 cents each" sign on it.  But there will certainly be some treasure in there he can't bear to part with, so we'll have to go through it together.

For my part, I culled my books down to 16 boxes, not counting the three or four boxes of picture books and children's books that were already in the garage.  It wasn't the cut I intended, but culling books is always so hard! Some books I've had for twenty years and, though I really have no reason to keep them... I've had them for twenty years!  How can I part with them now?

 I know, for example, that I have not opened my giant, onion-skin paged two-volume Anthology of American Literature from grad school since the 1990s.  But in it went.  Sigh.  I saw my notes on Robert Frost penciled in the margin and it just felt like betrayal to let it go.

I wonder about the trees...

Speaking of Frost. There's a Frost poem that has been running through my head these last few days.  I've quoted it before, here or elsewhere.  It speaks to me.  It's called The Sound of Trees. 
In it, Frost says

They are that that talks of going

But never gets away;

And that talks no less for knowing,

As it grows wiser and older,

That now it means to stay.

It always reminded me of myself:  dreaming and talking about going off somewhere, making a change. But I never did. I never followed through on it. Until now.

I shall set forth for somewhere,

I shall make the reckless choice

Some day when they are in voice

And tossing so as to scare

The white clouds over them on.

I shall have less to say,

But I shall be gone.

Home Sweet (Almost) Home

I spent the last few days in Bentonville, looking for a rental house with my mom.  It's become a sort of tradition.  When I went away for Grad school to Chapel Hill, NC, my mom went with me the first time, to find a place to live.  We had many adventures, and many good times, driving around the town together, trying to get our bearings.  To tell the truth, she remembers more of it than I do... or maybe she just remembers different parts.  But whether or not we remember the same things, it's an important memory we share together, and an important milestone in my life that she was there to help shepherd me through.

My dad is always there, too, I have to say.  Not physically, but very much in spirit, calling to check up on us, asking questions, worrying over us.  I'm not sure, frankly, why it's been my mom that goes and my dad that stays, but that's the way it is.

This time was reminiscent of the last.  I drove, so I'd benefit from the kinetic memory of the town that you get from physically driving it.  My mom navigated.  Unless I was turned around.  Or the map was turned around. Or we were all turned around.  I managed NOT to run over the woodchuck that scampered across the road in front of us on the first day, but I very nearly drove us into the front of a large construction truck while looking for a street address (thereby inspiring the ire of the driver, who was NOT amused when we crossed paths again a few blocks later and I was backing up in the middle of an intersection to correct a missed turn).  In the first hour I was so distracted, anxious and excited that I drove over a curb, stopped in the middle of more than one intersection, and was sneered at by a handful of truck drivers before I finally got my bearings.

The first day was spent just driving around, getting familiar with neighborhoods.  Bentonville, as the headquarters of Walmart, is a small town that grew very quickly.  So it has a charming town square and old center, with beautiful old homes on wooded lots, surrounded by modern suburbs that have developed in the past 20 years... and many in the past 10.  It's a strange juxtaposition of old and new, with very little transitional architecture.  In most towns you can see the old homes from the 1920s to 1940s, then the WWII homes, thrown up quickly to accommodate the GIs coming home. Then the groovy 60s and 70s homes, with their split levels, flat roofs, berms, guy-wires and groovy cast-iron railings... and then the 80s mcMansions, huge roofs, enormous overblown porticos, brick and faux stone... and finally the more most 90s starter homes, mass-produced by some low-budget developer expressly for new couples and people like me, starting over:  all made out of ticky-tacky and all looking just the same.

In Bentonville, you go straight from 1920 to 1980 with no steps in between.  That's an overstatement, of course.  But its clear from the layout and architecture of the place that the town was mostly stable through the 60s and 70s and exploded from the 80s on.  It's actually several towns melded together:  Bentonville, Centerton, Rogers, Little Flock, Bella Vista... all small towns closely spaced originally, now all one metro area with burbs and chain establishments in between.  A new dynamic for me.  Norman was founded on the Land Run and has grown steadily outward ever since. I'm sure if you plotted its architecture and growth, it would resemble tree rings.  Not so Bentonville.  It's like bamboo:  Ka Blam!

I'm rambling.  The point, and I do have one, is that once I came to terms with this fact of architecture, I was able to look for a new home there with a fresh perspective. I had imagined myself living in the city center, near the town square, in the old section.  Well, that's for when I've paid my debts and can buy one of the gorgeous old historic homes down there.  For now:  call me Suburbia.

The upshot is that I have turned in an application for a four-bedroom house with a walk-in closet the size of an airplane hangar, and I'm anxiously waiting the results.  I can't think of any reason why my application would be rejected, but the sheer fact of having to apply for the house presumes the possibility of rejection. So we wait.  By 5:00 last night they hadn't gotten the credit check back yet.

(Possibly) my new dwelling place in AR

The house is really great. Way nicer than anywhere I have ever lived, with the exception of the wonderful old house the X and I bought together a few years before the divorce.  This one has the edge even on that house because it's new, with things like modern plumbing and closet space, and without things like knob and tube electrical wiring.

I think I would have taken it for the walk-in closet alone, which is a luxury I have never had.

I will hold off on talking too much about the house here, for fear of jinxing it somehow.

Today  my mom and I are going to go walk the trails to the museum construction overlook so she can get a look at my future job site.  Then we'll wander around the farmers market downtown and then I suppose we'll head back to Oklahoma, whether or not we've heard about the house. I really don't want to drive back without a lease, but there's not much else I can do until I get confirmation or denial.

Wish me luck

In which I step right out of the comfort zone...

After sitting on the fence for a couple of weeks, I have finally made a decision about a major change in my life and the life of my son. It's a change that is exciting and scary and thrilling for me... and is making a lot of other people –  virtually everyone close to me – very unhappy. Some are sad, some are hurt.  And one in particular is very angry.  But I'm doing it anyway.

I have accepted a position as writer and editor at the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.  This means, of course, that Grayson and I will be moving there very soon, and it means that I have made a decision that, though I feel it is a good one for me and my son in the long run, impacts many other people negatively.

This is, I think, the first time in my life I have made a decision like this.  Never before have I decided against the wishes of those around me. Always I have chosen the road of least resistance.  Now, at last, I have to decide for Me.  Not for my parents, not for my son, not for my boyfriend or my ex husband, my friends or my workplace.  Just. For. Me.

This is excruciatingly difficult.  I will be leaving behind all my support systems and comfort zones, uprooting Grayson from his home, school, family and friends, creating warlike conditions between his father and me, and all based on a Hope.  A Belief that now is the right time for this change, that I'm ready, that Grayson can handle it, and that when the dust settles it will be a change for the better.  A new beginning. A fresh start.  And for once ... just because I Want It.

I Want this job. I Want to move to Bentonville:  a smallish town amid other smallish towns and surrounded by the beautiful, wild Ozark landscape. I want to start something new, learn new things, figure stuff out, make new friends... all my own, without the taint of memory or failure or bitterness.  I'm excited about this move, despite the fact that all those who love me best are saddened by it. 
It feels unbelievably selfish. But this time I'm not going to cave. I'm not going to shrink away from change and I'm not going to relax into the safety of the status quo.  I've been offered this amazing opportunity, to work as a writer and editor for a major new museum in a beautiful location.  If I turn this down, I'm turning away from living my life for me.

I will begin working at Crystal Bridges on July 25.  In four weeks I will need to find a place to live, pack up our belongings, wrap up my work at my current museum, orchestrate a move and get Grayson enrolled in a new school in a new town. I am, in short, going to be busier than a one-armed paper-hanger.

But somehow the worst is over. After agonizing and agonizing, I made the hard decision and now I can just take my lumps and keep moving until I get through it. On the other side of it all, the life I live will be my own.

Forgetting

Last week while my parents had my son with them at their lake house, I was charged with coming by every couple of days to water the potted plants on the front and pack porches.  On Friday, when I came by their house to pick up my kid, my dad was standing in the front yard with the hose, frantically hosing down the pots of petunias, trying to save the poor shrivelled things.  I'd completely forgotten.

This is not an isolated incident. Last week I had a terrible fight with The X, part of which was centered around the fact that I regularly forget to tell him about upcoming events, activities and important dates in Grayson's calendar. He sees it as deliberately cutting him out of our son's life.  It's not. I just forget.

The X could confirm this by just asking our son.  He'll tell you:  Mom Forgets.  Mom forgets to pack a lunch on field trip day. Mom forgets the time the school party is supposed to start and arrives just as it is ending. Mom forgets to refill his lunch account. Mom forgets the birthday party he was supposed to go to, or forgets to buy a gift.  Mom forgets that it's Scout night, even though every Monday is Scout night, and is surprised when Dad shows up to take him to the meeting. Mom forgets.

I wasn't always this way. I don't know if my forgetfulness is a sign of aging (god, I hope not), a lack of sleep, a failure of attention to detail, or some sort of psychological resistence to the myriad little necessary details of daily life. Sometimes, I simply fail to engage. I'm reading the teacher's note, but I'm not really absorbing all the details;  I'm hearing a coworker ask for information, but I'm not really making a mental note to fulfill the request. By the time I get to my office, the entire conversation is ancient history.

I am, I think... a little spaced out. Lately I just don't seem to be entirely there, wherever I am.  As I'm writing this now,  part of my brain is thinking about a couple of things I need to do today... things I will likely forget before this post is complete. My new absent-mindedness is part of why I have embarked on this Search for the Self. I feel reasonably sure that if I can get a handle on Who I Am... if I can come to terms with myself and be truly comfortable in my own skin, my brain won't be always pulled in two directions at once. Centeredness is the key, I think. I need to pull in all my mental tentacles (heh heh... mental tentacles... that would be a good band name) and focus on the still, calm center of Myself. 

The Buddhists talk about the need to Be Here Now. To practice Presence. It is something I aspire to.  Lately I feel like the cartoon character with the birds tweeting in a circle around her head:  thoughts, ideas, feelings, memories, worries... all circling noisily.  So I forget things, I lose things, I have to ask people to repeat what they've just said, I can't focus on tasks at hand, and I generally feel like my head has grown wings and is fluttering annoyingly just out of reach.

Somebody hand me a net.

Meanwhile, I sent my son off to camp yesterday, and I'm facing another week of being child-free.  This is week two of three in a row I have to do without my son in June.  I miss him, but I know he's happy at camp, where he is in the horseback riding club, and may be this moment saddled up on a horse, joyfully learning to ride.  If he's happy, I'm happy.  Lonely, a bit. But happy.

To keep the loneliness at bay yesterday after he left, I arranged to do a few hours service at Wildcare. I helped to muck out the Duck Inn, where are the little baby ducklings are housed. I fed young owls and hawks bits of chopped up rat at the end of a long set of forceps, and I chopped veggies and fruit for the little possums and raccoons. There are three new baby fawns there this week:  the sweetest, tiniest things, all spindly legs and big ears. They were orphaned, and without their mothers to feed and groom them, they were malnourished and weak, and covered in so many ticks that their eyes were infected and swelled shut.  Now they are tick free, they are bottle fed several times a day and their eyes are being cleaned and treated so that hopefully there will be no permanent damage.  Their poor mothers would be so relieved.

Route 66 with my Boy

I had the opportunity recently to take a roadtrip with my ten-year-old son, Grayson.  It wasn't a long roadtrip:  just four hours.  (My son is taking a couple of seriously long trips later this summer with his dad, whose family is from El Paso, TX, where they will be journeying together.)  We went to northwest Arkansas for just a day and a half.

I wanted to make the trip fun for us, so at the beginning, we started out on historic Route 66.  Oklahoma has the longest unbroken stretch of "The Mother Road" in the country, and it's still peppered with a few nostalgic landmarks.  I wanted him to get an essential Oklahoma experience out of the trip, because being from Oklahoma is a big part of who I am... and of who he is, as well.

"Okies" on Route 66, heading West.

Most people have never been to Oklahoma, and their entire concept of the state begins and ends with the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical of the same name, and/or The Grapes of Wrath.  Those people are very hard to convince that they don't know Jack Shit about Oklahoma.  Mostly because they don't really want to know. It's easier to just feel smug and superior and sneer at us Okies. 




A still pool in the Wichitas.

Oklahomans aren't all that proud.  I don't mean that we don't take pride in our state, I mean that we're not the least bit snotty about it.  You can be snotty about your state (well, you shouldn't be, but you can be) when you're from some glitzy place like California, or if you live in some hotspot of culture like New York City.  But nobody buys it if you're snotty about Oklahoma. Oklahoma is one of those places that most people think of as being somewhere you are from:  as in... you're not there anymore.  But those who know the state – who have lived here or taken the time to get to know us – understand what a good place it is. 

Oklahoma is like the still, certain core of being for me. It's unassuming, diverse, complex, humble, sweeping, humorous, beautiful and true.  It takes a time to get to know her, but she's full of quirks, kindnesses, and comforts.  She's got a big heart, and just wants people to love her.

A stop at Pops

So we hit the Mother Road, and I explained to Grayson why Route 66 was an important piece of American history.  I was afraid it would be hard to explain to a kid who grew up in the age of cell phones and wireless internet how a long strip of asphalt could hold value.  But he seemed to get it.  I think the movie Cars helped.

We made a few stops along the way, to see some of the classic Route 66 landmarks.  We stopped at Pops just outside of Edmond and picked up some funky sodas. We saw the round barn at Arcadia. And best of all, we stopped at the Blue Whale in Catoosa.



Catoosa's Blue Whale. Well loved.  



The whale isn't as old as you might think. It was build in the early 70s, not the 50s. But it has all kinds of nostalgic charm. The homely, rural swimming hole setting, the brightly colored concrete picnic tables and hand-painted signs all say "simpler times."  I shot this photo of G to mimic a photo of me shot in the same place in 1971 or 72, when I was just five or six and the whale was new. I don't really remember the trip, or if I do, it's very hazy.  But I knew my parents would remember the photo, so I made them a new one. 





Grayson seemed to like the whale, though he said it really needed some repairs. And as we left he looked over his shoulder and said he felt bad for the whale, because there was nobody but us there to see it.  I looked back at its big smiling blue face. That whale has been a cultural icon for Oklahoma for nearly 40 years. It has fans all over the world.  It may well be smiling still when I'm dead and gone.  "It knows its loved," I said.

A parable.

I'll be straight up with you... or as straight up as I can be at present.  I'm on the cusp of a potentially major change in my life.  It could be a good change... but it seems there is nothing good without a price.  "You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs," I've heard. I never really found myself in the position to truly understand and appreciate that truth until now.  Every silver lining has its cloud, apparently.

So I wait, to see what happens.  Either way it's good and bad. And in the meantime I neither eat nor sleep properly. I lay awake and turn over in my mind those mental prayer beads of doubt and worry.  It's a long string:  fear, regret, hope, grief, excitement, doubt, love and sorrow... rubbed smooth with handling, but no less painful for that.

What is worse?  Major change in your life, or the anticipation thereof?  I'm rather inclined to think it's the anticipation. At least once the change is a sure thing, you can take action, for good or ill. 

But I've been a bit too good, over the past few years, at taking action.  I tend to keep busy, keep moving to keep the dark at bay. And now... now at last the dark begins to creep up on me.  And my torch is flickering, I've backed myself into the wall, and the only way out is straight up... or else to set my feet and face what's coming toward me... the thing that's been stalking me.

Meanwhile my companions, torn and desperate, are beckoning to me from the adjacent passageway, utterly mystified at my refusal to run. Why would I stay here and face down this monster?  Why do I not run to safety, again?  It's always worked before.  But something tells me this time I have to face what's following me.  I have to turn and touch it, wrestle it down, feel its fragile reality under my boot before I can move on without fear.  Because it's only getting larger in my mind.  And the shadow it casts is much greater than the monster itself.


A rope dangles overhead, just out of reach -- lit by a distant glow of light that may or may not be a way out, but I can't go until I've faced It. And in the meantime, my companions -- their light, heat and warmth, their surety of the way out -- retreat further down the passage... backing toward safety, calling... and soon they will turn and run.  And if the rope doesn't reach, or the light is just an illusion... then, whether the monster is real or not, I will be left alone in the dark.

So I watch. 

Wildcare

I did my Sunday morning shift at Wildcare today.  It's always a bit of a challenge to get out of bed at 8:00 on a Sunday morning to go scrape bird poop off towells and dump waterbowls with possum turds floating in them. But I always feel I am a better person as I'm driving home than I was when I arrived.  It's good to be reminded that I am just an animal among other animals. 

A young hawk with an injured wing
 regards me with hostility. Even tiny and
damaged, it knows it's a predator.

I work primarily in the bird room:  a small space filled with cages of screaming baby birds, all wanting to be fed NOW.  My job is to get all the cages cleaned so they can go outside in the yard and get some fresh air and sunshine. The little birds are fearless, and they jump on your hands, begging for food, as you clean their cages. I love the feel of their warm, soft little bodies in my hands when I need to move them to get the paper in their cage.  I love the feel of their little dinosaur feet holding my finger.  They are so amazingly, astonishingly and wonderfully ALIVE.  And hungry! 

Today there was a whole fresh crop of babies.  Gone were the starlings and woodpeckers and most of the jays. Now the cages were full of blackbirds, grackles, and robins.  Rondi told me you can tell what month it is by what kind of babies you are getting.  All the different species have different seasons.  At home, all five of the little baby finches in the nest on our porch have flown away. 

After the birds, I troop out to the "play yard" to clean the bank of outdoor cages I call "Possum Row."   Usually these are full of either older juvenile possums, starting to get their adult evil-possum attitude, or large litters of babies, all goofy and curious and utterly unaffraid. I enjoy doing this, in spite of the fact that it's hot, smelly, swarming with flies, and a good place to pick up the occasional tick.  The possums are so hilariously, frowsily cute.  Their fur stands out in every direction, they have bright, curious bead eyes, they can grab the cage with their scaly, naked little tails, and their front feet look like hands in little black, fingerless gloves.  ("Thieves' gloves," my friend Michael calls them.) There was a surprise for me, today, however. 

Skunks!

A cage full of the most adorable baby skunks.  They were all piled up together, snoozing. But when I approached, they got all brave and some would charge the front of the cage, tiny tail up and threatening, and stamp their little front feet to warn me off.  I don't know at what age they get their smell... but I was being very careful not to piss them off, I can tell you.

Dawn Chorus

Up early today, with the back door open, listening to the Dawn Chorus as I wait for my coffee to brew.  I'm not naturally a morning person, but there are pleasures special to the pre-dawn hour that I can certainly appreciate.  The Chorus is one of them.  I love hearing the birds gradually wake up and the crickets wind down as the sky lightens.  I wonder what it's like to be a bird and get up every morning Singing:  just calling out your song to the world to greet the day.  That's how I'd like to be.  "Good morning World!"

I'm not, though.  Most mornings I'm groggy and disheveled and slow.  I'm utterly useless until I've had a cup of coffee. I am not, one might say, "getting the worm" at any hour before 8 a.m.  Though mostly my son and my dogs get me up by 7:30 at the latest.

This morning, however, is a different story, and I'm pleased for this opportunity to serve as audience to all my exuberantly wakeful avian neighbors.



It's amazing how many birds there are around us.  We barely notice them half the time, but when you start paying attention you notice:  they're everywhere. In every tree and shrub, bathing in puddles on the roadside, fluttering between the ceiling girders in Walmart, nesting under the overpasses, picking scraps out of the garbage, in a million different incarnations. How in the world is it possible for our world to have been blessed by these little miracles of evolution?  Flying dinosaurs, bright colored and bright eyed, flitting through our sky and we fail, most of the time, to be properly dumbfounded by them.  One look at their scaly little dinosaur feet and their reptilian ancestry is apparent.  They're a great example of what an extra few million years of evolution will get ya.  Wonder what humans will look like in 120 million years?  Oh, yeah, that's right, we'll have driven ourselves extinct long before then.

Well, best enjoy it while we're still on the planet, I suppose.

Kobi sleeps

I mentioned to someone a day or two ago that I wished I could be like my dog, Kobi.  Kobi wakes up joyfully every morning.  She sleeps under my covers, at the foot of my bed, and every morning she burrows her way up to my face and greets me as if I've been away for a week.  She's so glad to see me!  She's so happy to be alive!  And isn't it a beautiful, wonderful morning?  And then, when I ask "do you want to go outside?"  she is ecstatic!  "Oh Boy! Oh Boy!  Outside!  Oh Boy!  Let's go!"  And she runs to the door and eagerly waits for me to open it.  She races into the yard like kids to the icecream van.

When Kobi's not doing something important, like watching the front yard for intruders or playing with her sisters or chewing on something, she's asleep.  Just like that.  Yet when she's sleeping and the situation calls for her to be awake, she is instantly and enthusiastically awake. Bam!  No grogginess, no stumbling around  sleepily. She's awake.

How I would love to just shut my brain down and go to sleep when I'm not doing something!  How I would love the simple joy of living in the moment: Now. Now. Now!  Not endessly worrying over a thousand little troubles.  The word "worry" refers to a compulsive touching, as we do to a sore spot, and also to the vigorous shaking a dog gives a bone or toy or unfortunate prey animal.  It comes from the Old English word for "strangle."  Yeah.  That feels about right.

So I am practicing. Trying to live like Kobi, Here in the moment Now, with no part of my mind off doing its own thing. Trying to just Be who I Am. Celebrating Being, like those birds:  unabashedly, every morning:  "I'm Here!  I'm Here! I'm Here!

Summer at Last!

Summer officially begins.  Memorial Day weekend arrived and, as if that was the cue the weather was waiting for, it brought summer with it.  After a disappointing spring peppered with 40 degree days, it appears we've landed, plop, right in the sweaty, windy heart of another Oklahoma summer.  And summer in Oklahoma, despite its blast-furnace temperatures, is always my favorite season.  The university students go home to wherever they are from, and Norman slows down and grows up.

I look forward to lazy evenings with a cocktail on the patio, enjoying the smell of cut grass.  I'm ready to get out and find ways to get wet and beat the heat.  In heat like this, summer entetainment means Water.  We set up a pool in our yard every summer, and even though there's something really White Trash about it, I love getting out there and drifting, just looking at the blue summer sky and not thinking about anything.  Grayson and I sometimes go to Pelican Bay, a water park in Edmond, or we go find a lake, river or stream to get wet in.  And this year... this year we're going to the beach!

It occurred to me a few months ago that my boy is growing up, and I may have only a few more years in which he'll be completely happy to go on vacation with his mother.  So I decided that every summer from now on, we'll take a trip together.  I don't know how I'll pay for it.  I'll worry about that later.  I'm making memories for both of us, and holding his childhood as close to my heart as I can while it's still within reach.  So we're off to Galveston in August.  I know it's not the most glamorous beach, but it's the one I can afford to get to this year.  Next year maybe I'll be able to save up more money in advance.  I'm putting us up in the Gila Monster Hilton or some equally shabby hotel, so we can afford to spend five glorious days basking on the sunny shores of the mighty (if somewhat compromised) Gulf of Mexico. 

Planning to take a trip every summer also gives us the incentive to do a little research:  explore all the possible places we could visit.  Grayson says he wants to see Old Faithful, but he also wants to visit the Smithsonian, so there are decisions to be made in the year ahead.

There's a downside to summer for me, as well.  In the summer Grayson's dad and I trade off weeks with him, and between that and the weeks he spends at camp and visiting various grandparents, I sometimes lose him for two or three weeks at a time.  In June, for example, I have him at home for only one full week.  It frees up my social calendar to go do Grownup Things at will, but I miss my boy when I'm at home alone.  The house is too quiet, and I have too much time on my hands.

This summer presents fresh challenges, as well.  This summer Grayson is meeting his dad's girlfriend, preparatory to her moving here from Chicago.  This is a big step, and will mean big changes for all of us, but probably mostly for me.  In the nearly-three years since the divorce, The X has not previously had a "real," meaningful girlfriend. He was always dating this girl or that girl, but none of them lasted long.  A few months, half a year, and they were gone. And though it shames me to admit it,  there was a small, probably quite vile part of me that took some satisfaction in that.  Now I'm brought face to ugly face with that part, and it's not a comfortable feeling.  The Authentic Me is not, perhaps, 100% sure of her self worth, and has been, perhaps, propping it up a bit on the failure of The X to find anyone As Good As Me.

And now, of course, he has.  And she's coming here.  And meeting my son.  And because he's a terrific kid, I'm sure she'll love him.  And because he's got a loving nature and she's doubtless a very nice person, I'm sure he'll love her.  And I know that, no matter who else enters his heart and his world, he will always love his mother best.  I know that. My head knows that. But that little squinched-up vile bit inside my heart is scared that Grayson might ... just might... love her best. 

Remember that list of nice things people said about me back here?  Well, I need to remind myself of those things -- remind myself that even good, nice, wonderful people sometimes enter marriages that fail.  Those failures don't negate all the good things about those people, and it doesn't negate the good things about me. The fact that orange juice tastes terrible with toothpaste doesn't mean that the orange juice tastes bad.    It just doesn't work with toothpaste.  Learn from it. But don't give up on brushing your teeth.

There's plenty of joy in the world:  there's enough love and happiness, good fortune, good times, excitement, fun and success to go around, and someone else's good fortune does not diminish my chances of achieving any of it.  It's not the lottery.  It's Life, and we all have to make our own way and seek out our own happiness. 

And so I am trying to kick that nasty little bit out of my heart and make way for what's next.  It's feeding on my future. It's getting in the way of my Quest.  It's as stubborn as a tick, but I'm determined to dislodge it, because I have a job to do here. 

Chaos Theory

Since my divorce, I've made a surprising discovery about myself:  I have a high tolerance for environmental chaos.

When I was married and keeping house for "a family," I spent up to 5 hours every weekend dusting and scrubbing, vacuuming, doing laundry and  on and on and on.  It was often a point of contention in the marriage, as no doubt it is in many marriages, how much time I spent on these drudge jobs vs. how much time my ex spent on them, and the relative value weight of yardwork vs. housework.

Since I've become single again, with no one but myself and my son to please... I've degenerated into a complete and utter slob.

Sadly, I think this must be Authentic.

My car is full of gum wrappers, empty soda bottles, crumpled receipts and crumbs. My kitchen sink is always piled with dishes. My coffee table is a jungle of random objects and sticky substances.  Lets not even talk about my carpet.

My response to this?

"Wow, someone should really clean this mess up." And then I go out and putter in the garden, or put my feet up and read a book or something else that doesn't help the situation at all.  Often I'm not even really aware of the disastrous nature of my housekeeping until I'm going to have visitors and I suddenly am able to see the place through their eyes.  Good God, is that really my bra on top of the TV? 

I wasn't always this way. I vaguely remember once keeping a fairly tidy office and working hard to keep dust bunnies from achieving sentience on the stairs, but something has changed.  I now have no one to blame but myself. And as it is my own mess and my own decision not to tidy it, I'm not angry about it.  Something about removing that third person - the one who is NOT doing the scrubbing and sweeping - has freed me from the whole cycle and removed the source of resentment.  I don't mind things not getting done, I only mind when there's only one person not doing them.

By the way, I do all the yard work, too and no, it's not equal to housekeeping.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I never clean, or even that I don't wish I was tidier, I'm just observing the phenomenon. Authentic Me is not concerned about a messy house, and can live in congenial peace and harmony with a certain amount of chaos. 

Chaos.  The source of all creation.  Over my computer, on my desk at work, I have pinned a copy of the Chinese (or is it Japanese?) symbol for Chaos.  To me, it looks like a little swordsman riding a wave, and sort of sums up the way I do things. Woo Hoooo!  Here we go!

I read somewhere that creative people thrive on chaos, and that chaos is essential to the dynamic creative process.  The universe itself was formed from the chaos of the Big Bang and the random collision of materials that ensued.  Chaos Theory has to do with discovering the order that underlies huge and seemingly random patterns... which is kind of what I'm trying to do with my life.  A tiny change at the outset can cause completely and wildly different outcomes:  the flapping of a butterfly's wings in North Dakota resulting in typhoons in Thailand.

In more concrete terms, it means that – at least for now – for this stage of my life - I'm not completely in control.   Cosmic butterflies are flapping their wings.  I like to tell myself that means I'm "Open to the Universe," inviting creativity, opportunity and abundance.   Or I'm just a slob.  Who knows?

Sticky-Note Self

Since embarking upon this Search for the Authentic Me thing, I find that, ironically, it has sort of driven me to a certain level of inauthenticity.  I want to find some STUFF that defines me, but rather than let that grow organically out of myself, I'm trying to stick things on like post-it notes.  I find myself wanting to go out and do stuff so I can say I did it, so I can be actively seeking this Me of which I speak.

I keep getting distracted from Who I AM by Who I Want to Be.  So now I have a touchstone for what's authentic:  if I'm doing it just so I can take a picture and post it on Facebook.... it's probably not authentic.

I'm like a crow, distracted by shiny stuff.  Or maybe a bowerbird or pack-rat is more appropriate.  "Ooo!  That's shiny!  That's admirable or desirable or cool, I'll just stick it on, add it to my collection, post it on my blog." Then it's mine, and since we all know that you are what you acquire, those qualities will be transferred to Me, thereby instantly making me admirable, desirable, cool, etc.

On the other hand, maybe you don't know what fits until you try it on.

Like volunteering at Wildcare.  For the past three weeks, I've gone once a week to volunteer for this wildlife rehabilitation center in Noble.  I've been meaning to do it for a long time, and so finally now I'm making the time to do it.  I'm trying it on.  I've never volunteered anywhere before (of my own free will. Doing things because your job or your position on the board doesn't count).  Does that make Me a Volunteer?  Maybe not, but I think that volunteering as a means of interacting with and caring for wild animals IS Me.  So I guess that passes the Facebook test.

Me with a lorikeet.  Narcissistically FB ready.

Bungee jumping... probably wouldn't. Not that I'm tempted, frankly.

This week I took my son to the zoo to see the new baby elephant.  I did it for a couple of reasons.  One, because I'd been feeling low and nobody can feel low in the presence of a baby elephant. Two, I want to share experiences like that with my son while he's still young enough to be interested in going to the zoo with his mother and I fear my window is closing there. Three, I wanted to post pictures of us doing something fun together on Facebook and Flickr.  This proves I'm a good mom who is engaged in her son's life and wants to offer him enriching experiences.

My son with a lorikeet, having an awesome time.

Pass the FB test?  Sure, I think so, because I had genuine reasons as well as self-serving reasons.  And truly I enjoy the zoo, as long as I don't go too often or when it's too hot or too crowded.  There are two things I love about it (besides the obvious one of gaping at exotic animals).  I love to watch my kid enjoy the experience and (see above), I like to interact with animals.  My favorite is the lorikeet experience.  You get a cup of nectar and you're ushered into the aviary full of beautiful, brightly colored birds who have been conditioned to expect sweet deliciousness from humans.  They land on your shoulders, your hands, arms, head. They crowd each other around the cup, they can even take the plastic lid off with their beaks, I was told, in their eagerness to satisfy their need for the sweet stuff.

I love these silly, shallow birds. They're utterly self serving and unapologetic.  Besides that, they have cool dinosaur feet and they are colored like plush toys.

There's something about birds that is truly wonderful.  I love the feel of bird feet curling around my finger.  I love their bright eyes and the way they turn their heads to inspect you first from this eye and then from that. At Wildcare there are some mostly fledged starlings that hover around the outdoor "Play yard,"  begging shamelessly for a handout from every human that passes through.  They land on your head and shoulders and practically have to be nudged out of the way in order for you to walk through.  Interacting with them makes me feel somehow privileged.  Most people don't get to interact with wild birds in this way.  It makes me glad I volunteer there, and keeps me coming back, as do the baby opossums, no matter how smelly their cages.

So I don't know.  Maybe I'm just sticking sticky notes all over myself, but maybe it's okay during this process to try on a few labels and see if they fit. I don't think I can come up with any better plan, so that's what I'll have to go with for now.

Worms and Bugs

I was in Okie City yesterday to do some radio interviews, and dropped by my favorite nursery and garden center, Horn Seed Co.  This place is awesome.  There are plenty of bigger garden centers, but none that have the old-time feel of the serious gardener that Horn does.  They have this wonderful old bar that's backed with a wall of drawers full of bulk seeds. You can order your seeds by the pound, and they'll pour them up onto a scale with a big silver scoop on top, and then package your seeds for you in a brown paper bag tied with twine.  You can get about 20 different kinds of beans there, and seed potatoes, strawberry or onion sets, peanuts... it's a gardener's heaven.  And the greenhouse has the best selection of herbs and veggies.  You can choose from about nine types of basil and six or seven types of sage alone.  It makes me happy just to go in there, even if I don't buy anything.

I went in, ostensibly, to buy a replacement zucchini for the one the cutworms got.  But I got to browsing, and ended up with six packets of flower seeds, two bedding plants, a plastic container of live ladybugs and an icecream carton full of worms.  Now that's shopping.

Live ladybugs and worms!  Awesome!  How could I resist??

Grayson and I released the ladybugs into the garden at dusk last night, giggling as they climbed up our hands and arms. What's ticklier than  ladybug on your arm?  Well, how about six ladybugs?  It's fun to see so many of them in one place:  little red spots of voracious predatory cuteness, unleashed on the unsuspecting pests plaguing my broccoli and potato plants.

The weather has been peculiar this spring:  cold and windy. And my garden has a cringing air to it:  like it's crouching down, waiting for the next blow.  Everything seems like it's holding off on growing until it sees what the weather is going to be like. All except the broccoli, which is loving the cool temperatures. Unfortunately, the broccoli worms love it too. You gotta hand it to evolution where those guys are concerned.  You couldn't make a critter colored more exactly like broccoli leaves. I hope ladybugs like them.

The worms are for my worm composting bin.  Red wigglers are tiny little scrap-devouring demons!  And they poop out the world's finest fertilizer. Plus, frankly, it's just cool to have worms eating your garbage. Grayson loves to go "feed the worms" with our salad scraps.

I'm telling you all of this because the worms and bugs really speak to some important part of me.  I know it's essential in some way to the Real Me. Gardening is in my genes. My great grandmother kept a huge garden and worked it herself into her 90s.  All spring and summer you could find her in the garden, leaning on her hoe handle, wearing the old-timey sun bonnet and bib apron my mother made for her every year, pulling onions or digging potatoes, or sitting on the back porch in the glider of a summer evening, shelling purple hulls or snapping beans. Those were some of the best memories I have from my childhood: time spent in the garden with her. I would go handle the butterflies that were drunk on apricot nectar from the fallen fruit by the back door, or eat fresh-pulled green onions with bread and butter, or stand on a low brick wall at the back of the garden, picking and eating handfuls of black currants.

I'm not a quarter of the gardener she was. But I aspire to be. Heck, I'm just 44, I've got a good 50 years yet to practice. 

So bring on the bugs!  Bring on the dirt, the seeds, weeds, worms and compost. When I'm with them, I know I'm home. 

A Not Very Scientific Experiment

In the spirit of the search for the self... in the past two days I have done two things to help me define myself.  Here they are:

1)  I returned to my maiden name.  It's been two years since my divorce, and my son is old enough to be okay with not having the same name as his mother.  Besides, it occurred to me that there might be another Mrs. X in the offing before long, and I didn't want to be the Other Mrs. X.  So I decided to finally jettison the name, thus freeing me (in theory) from one more bit of emotional flotsam. Changing your name is a surprisingly simple process that involves several pieces of paper, two trips to the County Courthouse, and $118 in court fees, (plus $22 to publish an announcement of the impending change in the newspaper's legal notices) but it was well worth it, in my opinion.  After about 15 minutes at the courthouse yesterday afternoon, I am, once again, who I was. So, whether or not I know who that is, at least I can name her accurately.

2)  I conducted a quick and very informal poll on Facebook to ask friends to give me a couple of words that described me.  This is cheesy and narcissistic in the extreme, but it's all done for a good cause.  Here's the list of words offered up by my friends and acquaintances :

Comical
Creative
Brazen
Revelatory
Inspiring
Lovely
Hardworking
Hilarious (2)
Independent (2)
Fullofsurprises (this was a cheat to get three words counted as one)
Dedicated
Funny
Beautiful
Tall
Short
Creative
Fun
Gorgeous (special thanks for that one)
Ebulient
Iconoclastic (Those two are about $10 each, I think)
Quirky
Earnest
Caring
Friendly
Talented
Loving
Unforgettable


So, it looks like Funny wins at 4 mentions.
The runner up is in the Pretty category, with 3,which was a surprise. 
Then there's hardworking, dedicated and earnest, which sort of go into the same category.  So I'll call that a second runner-up.

So, based on my completely un-scientific, untested and hiiiiiiiighly dubious poll, The Real Me could safely be described as Funny... and might be considered Attractive and Dedicated/hardworking/earnest. 

I tried to group some others together, but it got complicated.  Quirky... is that sort of like fullofsurprises?  Or more like Creative?  Can Iconoclastic and Revelatory go together just because they're big words??

It's too bad there's no such thing as a Facebook for People Who Dislike You.  It would be even more interesting to see what their list would look like.

I do try to make people laugh. Often at my own expense. It makes the social give and take easier for me, and keeps things nice and light so you don't have to talk about anything too real, and it's better than small talk.

Over the past year, however, I've noticed in myself an increased ability and willingness to have real conversations with people. I don't skim the surface like I once did, and though sometimes I wish I'd stuck with skimming, more often than not I find out some really interesting things about people. 

Mostly what you find out about people is that they're not anywhere near as (fill in the blank)  as you imagined them to be. For example, the electrician with a soft Okie accent who came to fix my air conditioner. In conversation with him I discovered that he practiced yoga, was raised by a lesbian couple, and hated being an electrician.

Today I gave a radio interview to a woman who told me God had spoken to her 18 years ago and told her to build him a radio station. She also told me she could tell something was different about me when she saw me today and she knows that good changes are coming for me soon. And she said a prayer for my strength and happiness.

I'm not a religious person, but I figure it can never hurt to have someone with a radio station to God say a prayer on your behalf. And if she says something good is coming my way, well, I'll believe her.

What's a Bandicoot?

My son and I were browsing through the Smithsonian's fabulous Natural History book – or, as we call it, the Great Big Book of Everything – trolling for bizarre animals. (This is is a thoroughly awesome book, both for browsing and for braining intruders, as it weighs about 15 pounds) .... and we ran across the bandicoot.

The bandicoot is an Australian animal that looks something like an aardvaark and something like an opossum.  But its real claim to fame is that it is called a bandicoot.  You've got to love the Aussies, who truly excel at animal naming.  These are the people who brought us the platypus, the kookaburra, and the wallaby.  I wish Australians could name more things.  

Today I launch Blue Bandicoot as the public offshoot of a private blog I have kept for years known as Scrawlspace... but without all the incriminating names and personal details of people whose lives intersect mine who might not wish to be splattered over the blogosphere. It's a combination journal, essay collection and rumination spot, with one primary objective:  the search for the Authentic Me.  It's named Blue Bandicoot because "bandicoot" is a helluva good word, and I'm not as creative at naming things as the Aussies.  And also because as I was trolling the web for bandicoot pictures, I ran across this interesting explanation of the significance of having a bandicoot as your Spirit Animal:  "Bandicoot is a great guide for those who are currently in a dark part of their lives who need some respite from what might seem an endless, shadowy, tumult."

This is a bandicoot. A cute bandicoot.

Well, so there you go. Natural History and Aboriginal mythology agree. Bandicoot it is.


Okay, if you're still reading after that, I'm amazed. Why do you or anyone else care who the Authentic Me is?  You don't, of course.  But I'm probably not the only one wrestling with this issue.  Dante started the Inferno with it:

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

I'm 44, and two years ago I found myself divorcing my husband of ten years, whom I thought had been my dream husband; selling the house I thought had been my dream house, and moving into a rented house in my hometown of Norman, Oklahoma. Of all the possible pathways I believed my life might take, this was not one of them, and in just a few short months my entire future – or what I could reasonably see of it – was swept away. 

I went through all the stages of grief:  denial, anger, tears, wine, Match.com, sex with inappropriate people, wine, tears again... etc, and emerged into a new world.  My world.  Here, many of the old expectations no longer apply. Here there are new adventures like dating and mowing my own lawn.  There are new opportunities, like hanging up pictures I actually like and blowing off all but the most absolutely essential housekeeping. There are also new hazards, like my ex husband's new girlfriend and predatory colleagues who turn into Mr. Hyde when they learn of my divorce.

The upshot is that everything on this side of that period we shall refer to as The Crazy Time is different. Even the stuff that is the same is slightly different. I still work as the PR director for a natural history museum, for example. But now, working at the same job I worked at before The Crazy Time feels oddly anomalous.  As if it should have changed, too.

So recently I realized that I felt Stuck. That I feel ready for my life to Go On... but I have no idea where it's going.  I have no idea where I want it to go, only that the old direction is no longer an option and the old me is no longer driving.

So who is?

Over the course of the last few months I've tried on some new Mes.  Pretty Me is nice, but expensive and unsustainable.  Being Pretty all the time is just too much work. I've got to relax sometimes, and though I love the look of the acrylic nails, I can't really afford them on my single mom's budget. Community Service Me is just too exhausting and I can't maintain the necessary level of Concern and Commitment. Healthy Me (a sister to Pretty Me) needs a drink and gets bored on the eliptical machine every single morning.

So it appears I'm not going to be able to just choose a Me off the rack.  I'm going to have to go a la carte.  And that means figuring out a few things.  Hopefully the parts will add up to a whole. I'm starting with the very basics, here.  So far, here's what I have:

Me is not a morning person. 
Me prefers red wine.
Me does not care for sushi.

Riveting, I know.  Stay tuned, I'll keep you posted.