Disguise

I’ve been getting very little sleep. Even for me.

This isn’t a whine, just setting up the background. For me this means that most nights I’m getting a broken up four hours or so. I’m in just-had-a-newborn-baby territory without the baby and any of you moms and dads have been there, you know how it makes you loony.

The cause of said sleep deprivation is my four-year old. He’s been waking up between the hours of eleven and two and sleeping in my bed. With his leg at some point wrapped around my neck. Lovely.

Now in case you think it’s time for some tough love, I assure you I’ve done that before. Two kids made it through relatively short stints before they were rerouted back to their own bed. But the little guy it turns out has tonsils so big that he has sleep apnea. So, he stops breathing, snorts, wakes himself up terrified and comes flying into my bed. For the next few hours the situation repeats itself but he doesn’t get scared as long as he’s with me. I however hear him snort and am awake the rest of the night making sure he breathes. Because moms can will shit like that.

We just figured out what was going on, and the appointment has been set next Thursday to remove the gigantic golf balls he has instead of tonsils. Yes, I’m panicked but enough about that. If you know anything about me, if I’m truly frightened, I disengage. I don’t want to discuss it. I want to ignore it until it is dealt with because I can’t process the complications. Okay.

So six months of no sleep, and today in the ladies’ room at work, I took a look at myself. I’ve put on weight (again) but that wasn’t really the concern. My hair has grown out and the gray roots are showing. I had to cancel the appointment I had because it falls the weekend following the surgery and the next time my hair magician can see me is sometime mid February. Eh, first world problems.

But when I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw an average forty-year old woman. Pants an inch too short as are my coat sleeves (this is chronic. too short for Tall and too tall for Regular), and belly pudge hanging over the belt. I can still suck it in but it’s quite a suck. Hair, air-dried on the train like always, now dry and a frizzy, long mess. Mascara, foundation, blush, none noticeable. Large circles under my eyes, face plump (too much microbrew?) and wrinkles that won’t go away any longer.

Here’s the strange part. When I look in the mirror, I still see me as a phase. Right now, I want you to think back to your second grade picture, maybe third. No one, I mean no one looked good at that age. The bangs were always trimmed by family, most of us just started to wear hideous brown camouflage glasses.

When I look in the mirror now, I think of the me in my second grade picture and how that was a phase. I think this is a phase. I think I am sleep-deprived and delusional as well.

The same way that people at work don’t know about my writing life, I feel like my outside doesn’t match my inside. It never has. Never.

Sometimes I’m New York chic. Black clothes head to toe, tailored. Heeled oxfords, patent leather of course. My hair would be slicked back and I’d have dark lashes and red lipstick, a classic Robert Palmer girl.

Other days, I’m hippy flower chick. Long maxi skirt with flat sandles, Dave Matthews t-shirt hanging by a thread. I’d wear a large brown leather belt and a bag across my chest hanging limply to one side. My hair would be beachy and windblown, the way only Kate Hudson can look walking down the beach.

Or maybe I’m nerd chic. Black glasses, shaggy cropped hair. Tight black band t-shirt, some large, loose-fit, worn-out, threadbare jeans. Maybe some polka dotted suspenders. Black combat boots.

Or how about fancy? Men’s tuxedo, tailored for a woman, with the coat button just so that I can not wear a shirt and not get arrested. Satin seams along the outside of the pants. Black stillettos. Long hair, red, straightened. Burgundy lipstick. Black eyeliner.

All of those? Me. The me in my mind, the me inside, the me of the future, the me of the past.

The person in the bathroom mirror, twelve floors above a busy Chicago downtown street? Business coat. Black shirt. Business pants. Practical flat gray shoes. Not me.

How do I become them?

Crafty Von Crafterson is in the House

Christmastime is near and you all know what that means… Crafty Von Crafterson is in the house. I know how you’ve missed her.

If you remember last year, I was obsessed inspired when I came upon directions for making a funky garland for my tree. I planned on draping it around and around our usual seven-ish foot tree, looping and layering it. Those colors, the beauty, the joy those colors of felt brought me.

And as you saw in the photos, well, it was perfectly long enough for my short mantle. You should know, it stayed up all year. Those beige walls couldn’t bear to part with it, so it’s up for Christmas again, all four feet of it.

You all know me well enough by now to know that if I could do a stubby garland, I needed something bigger, grander because if there is anything I have in spades, it’s time on my hands. I decided I would make a garland out of little birds after seeing this. Let us keep in mind that I didn’t know how to sew at all before doing the garland project of 2011. Laini Taylor is an artist and does this sort of thing. Never let common sense stop you, just like writing. Always good advice.

That being said, I saw it and had to make one. Or two. Perhaps just a smallish garland. What if I could make birds for all of the grandmothers, a family of birds for them, one representing them and their children? What if I could find small trees to hang them on? Oh, the pretty.

And then I told my daughter (she and I taught ourselves how to do the garland together) who ran with the idea.  What if we find trees and put the entire family on them? The grandmas, grandpas, their kids, and all of the grandkids? What if we make each generation a different size?? Oh, the kid dreams big. And I (like any rational person with way too much time on her hands) shouted, “YES!”

It was some time after I had cut and sewn the first nine birds for my mother’s “family tree” that I remembered that my daughter is at her mother’s house half of the time. I do believe she knows this when she gives me brilliant ideas that require a mess of work. Oh, she’s good.

First, there’s tracing…

Perhaps some eyes?

Then there’s sewing and just in case one is half a bottle into their wine, do not forget to leave room for stuffing…

I found some trees made of ribbon to hang the little critters on and sewed a little white ribbon loop on the center. My mother’s goes in the mail tomorrow. Small tree, two large birds, three medium and four small. One small black one representing my sister’s dog, Max. That makes the bird sound like a lawyer…

I’m going to wait on showing you the final pictures until I’ve done the big tree, the Mama, for my mother-in-law. I think right now after the last month and all of the sadness, she needed to see all of us on that tree including Red, right next to her at the tippy top. Twenty three birds in all.

Oh, and then there’s the small matter of a book to type. But for now, let’s just make some happy, colorful birds.

xoxo

Live Music

1. Liberace
2. Def Leppard
3. Robert Palmer
4. Sting
5. Phil Collins
6. Van Halen
7. Melissa Etheridge (x3, maybe 4)
8. Indigo Girls
9. Sarah McLachlan
10. Dixie Chicks
11. Bob Dylan
12. The Dead
13. Blitzen Trapper
14. Brandi Carlile

Last night I went to see Brandi Carlile. I got to thinking about the concerts I’ve seen, the ones I remember, the many I’ve forgotten.

I went in to this one knowing nothing about her other than an interview on NPR.

I left the concert, a huge, huge fan.

 

Polka Dot Joy

Today I found it. A duvet cover the shade of poppies with one inch white circles covering it. I looks just like the print of Minnie Mouse’s dress. Lamp bases the shape of large oversized wine bottles, clear and red on sale for $25 bucks. Black lampshades, covered in white irregularly shaped polka dots. Thank you IKEA.

My bedroom is the spottiest, happiest room I’ve ever been in. I love it. Now just to paint it a shade that is not retina-detaching yellow. Funny, all the spots and red actually make the yellow seem muted.

Such a silly thing, a bedroom. I’m rarely in it, and I had gotten it into my head that it really didn’t matter. I have dressers in there that twenty years ago, the woman I bought my first house from, she was going to give them to the salvation army. Unless I wanted them. I didn’t want them, but I surely was thankful for them because I needed them.

Growing up, we never got anything new. When someone in our extended family either upgraded or passed away, we would end up with their furniture. I had dressers from Aunt Helen’s house, a bookshelf from the church rummage sale. I always loved getting something that was new to me, but function always won over beauty. We couldn’t afford beauty. I was so excited one year because the dresser I got, an ugly rectangle in a yellowy wood, had a glass top. I covered the top of the dresser with cut-outs from magazines, beautiful images from advertisements and with great care laid the glass back down, knowing my father would kill me if I broke it. It was the first time something felt like mine.

As an adult, this idea is still inherent. It’s in my blood that if something works, you should be thankful for it no matter how ugly. I can’t tell you how difficult it was for my husband and I to buy a bed, or rather the platform and headboard. You see, our bed was on a metal frame. The mattress came from his mother, and was his older brother’s before then. It was twenty years old and it wasn’t until I started having back issues that I thought, okay, we’re grown ups, we can buy a bed.

But the rest seemed like such a wasteful expense. If you spend your life with hand-me-downs, or taking furniture off of the curb and refinishing it, you have no idea how much things cost. Somehow my husband convinced me and we bought it. I felt an odd sense of guilt, like if I was so wasteful I would be proven the fool by the fates. So far, so good. But yeah, I’m knocking wood.

All of that is to say, that it was such an odd feeling, to put on a duvet cover that I picked out and seeing it on a bed frame that I love, flanked by these full size table lamps that we’re using instead of itty-bitty bedroom lamps, well, it was amazing to feel how me the whole area was. I had to call in my four-year old, because he gets joy. He looked around and said, “Can I jump on it?”  I told him yes, and he hopped up on my bed, rolled around and said, “It’s BEAUTIFUL!” I watched him squealing around, admiring my clearance lamps, and thought, “Yes. It is.”

May your day begin and end in a space that makes you happy.

May you be surrounded with people who allow you to be joyful.

May a little polka-dot sunshine, brighten your day.

Love.

An Exercise in Frustration

Smell your favorite scent. Close your eyes and really work hard to smell the smell that brings you joy.

Once you have done that, bring back a memory of something with no baggage, all happiness. For some people it’s holding a baby, for some it’s petting a cat, a new love, an old love, whatever it is, remember that moment. Don’t add dialogue, just the pure feeling. While your remembering the feeling you had then, try to smell the scent from step one.

Now hear a favorite sound. It could be a stream, or a favorite band or a child’s laughter. Whatever does it, imagine you can hear it. Listen to it as you trigger the happy memory and smell the scent from the very beginning.

As you can guess, this goes on until you are unable to use words which is the goal. It’s a way to get your mind to short-circuit until you drop out of words and into a type of meditation.

The first one that the book said to use was your favorite taste. I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to think of my favorite taste. Pizza? Cheesecake? Pepper Triscuits with sharp cheddar melted on top? I was stumped. Everything that popped into my head was a cliché of myself. At one point, pizza was my favorite thing in the world. But when I tried to use it for this exercise, it just made me feel bad. The last time I ate it, it felt heavy and there was too much cheese and I felt like I was eating it to just eat it which made me angry because if I was going to waste a bazillion calories why not on something I love, like a Reese’s peanut butter cup Blizzard?

Which got me to thinking about that Blizzard and how I do truly enjoy them, but really? In the entire universe that is the best I can do? Seriously, that is my favorite taste? I thought about french fries and for the first time in the last twenty years I actually asked myself if I even liked them. I eat them because I remember that I used to love them. But now? I don’t really like them. I eat them because I order them and they come with a cheeseburger. I never knew that until that very moment. This went on and on.

How long has it been since I thought about what I like?

To sum up, an exercise in meditation had me twisted in such knots I was sick to my stomach. Did I ever tell you about the time I tried to take Tai Chi and the instructor told me after class that it wasn’t for me and signed me up for Kung Fu? Yes, true story for another day, but it gives you a clue.

I search out methods of finding peace, finding joy, and the methods produce absolute chaos in my mind. Luckily I have a friend who is a yoga instructor and she, through the laughter, ahem, gave me some strategies for meditation.

But here’s the thing. How many of you know what you really like anymore? We’re so hyperfocused on raising our families, our writing, our jobs, our spouses, our kids, our pets, and on and on and on that I wonder if people really take a moment to think about what really brings them joy and not just the recollection of what brings them joy.

That being said, I realized that I love the smell of mint and my husband’s cologne.

I love a cold night and flannel sheets against my skin.

I love the taste of a ripe peach and tomatoes still warm from the sun. I don’t think either of these are my favorites, but I just don’t know. I like jalapeno stuffed burgers, and guacamole, and peanut butter pies, hell anything with peanut butter, but when I think of an amazing taste, cilantro comes to mind, bruschetta on crisp thick bread. There is something about the clean fresh taste that I always love, yet I eat all of the fatty stuff out of what? Habit? Sabotage? Memory?

Huh. Who knew?

 

Hot Chocolate, Running and Group Hysterics

What a difference a week can make.

Look at this skaterboy.

This kid is fearless. He got that skateboard two weeks ago when he turned four. As of Saturday, he has a temporary cast up to his knee and four (?!) broken bones in his foot. The skateboard is retired until before Halloween. (This is the part where you cross fingers and toes because after the doctor told me that the boy who walked in, wouldn’t be carried, told me his foot really didn’t hurt, after the doctor said that there were four clean breaks which was good because maybe he wouldn’t need surgery (did I mention this is my baby who just, just turned four?) but we’d know more when the ortho saw him…deep breaths.)

On the promise of a long weekend and a boy who would have to be carried everywhere he went and sitting with an elevated leg, I went out and bought board games, a new video game (all television/video restrictions gone, screw it) and crafts. Oh yes, Crafty Von Crafterson was in the house. We painted birdhouses (pirate ship and rocket for those who are dying of suspense) and I made little felt birds to stick on the pegs once they were done (Do you remember the blanket stitch I learned from the garlands? Well, yeah, did it on birds which make me want to make a bird garland. I can’t figure why the book isn’t typed up…).

Prior to this falling-off-the-slide-and-hitting-the-foot-just-right fiasco, I decided that the time had come. The time was now. Marvin K. Mooney won’t you please…oh, wait. Wrong story. I had however decided that I need running back in my life. I hadn’t run, really run, since the marathon I finished with what I thought was a bit of a muscle issue that turned out to be discs mashing on my nerves.

I’m not the most motivated during the nine o’clock hour when the kids are finally in bed, so I searched for a small race. If I’m going to sign up to run, there are two factors: the charity and the goodies. Check out this hoodie and read what it says.

Are you kidding me? How fantastic are these hoodies? And yes, that says HOT CHOCOLATE! Now back in the day, I might have gone for the brewery run. Okay, maybe I still would, who are we kidding? But, BUT, orange and gray? Orange being my very favorite color, the color of the majority of my house and my wedding dress. Oh, yes. It was fate, kismet, karma.

The seal on the run? Hehehe. Check out the post race mug.

I kid you not. Chocolate. Fondue. Seriously. Who’s with me??

And not being one to do something responsible when I can go stupid, I’m giving the 15K a go. Eh, why not? Let’s test out the ol’ back, shall we?

The Chicago Hot Chocolate 15K, my kind of race in my kind of town. And because I’m all about health and fitness (for any of you that have actually met me, well, please play along and shush), if you click the link you’ll see that they have them in other major cities as well. My new motto is Run for the Fondue. (Ronald McDonald houses also benefit if you’re more the sort that, you know, has a conscience and such. But you still get the fondue!)

The reason I mention this (other than a public service which it clearly is), is because I have run the last two days. I have only run short two milers but they felt like twenties and I say this as someone who has run twenty milers. Brutal runs in hot, hot weather. I’ve been carrying my 40 pound son around and today was the first day of a bathing routine. The doctor at the emergency room suggested something along the lines of a washcloth to scrub the yuck but I think she was unfamiliar with the stink that comes with a previously active four-year old boy.

I stuck a small plastic chair in the bathtub, sat said boy on the chair and filled the tub with about six inches of water. I proceeded to water him like a tomato plant, and scrub him down, his arms around my neck, his good leg bearing what weight he could, his cast set upon the rim wrapped in a towel. He thought it great fun, as my quads screamed from the new running, and my back shot knife-like pains down my leg from the angle.

My daughter ran in the bathroom in a panic.

“Uhm, remember those jeans you wanted me to try on.”

(Okay, do not lose your cool that wearing a boy as a necklace, soapy hands trying to get him clean and keep him from toppling as you are both half in/half out of the water, does not even register to a twelve-year old girl) “Ye-ess.” (Panting)

“I have one pair of jeans.”

“One?”

“One that fit.”

And so it goes. My September deadline for finishing typing the book has come and gone. I’m running a race for fondue. One kid has a broken foot and another shall be attending seventh grade in her underpants. The guy in the middle went to bed with an excruciating headache based on the amount of attention he has seen his brother get for the last three days.

Oh, it’s going to be a long four to six weeks…

 

 

 

Home

What does a picture say?

Joy.

We’ve known each other thirty-four years. We now have ten kids between the two of us.

When I saw her walking down the aisle, it was the first time I had seen her in eight years, since my wedding, and it felt like ten minutes. The pictures I have of E. walking down the aisle are a bit blurry because I was sobbing under my sunglasses. To see her happy, to see her joy, squeezed my chest until there was actual pain. That is how much I love this woman.

I looked at her children standing up for their parents, the three boys on one side, the four girls on the other and wondered how they’ll do it. The oldest is a senior in college, the youngest is five. They all walked into the wedding to the Brady Bunch theme song. And we laughed.

I danced in some red Kate Spade sandals with a four inch cork heel until my toe began to bleed. And I didn’t feel it.

We danced to the Dixie Chicks “Cowboy Take Me Away” because when her mother passed away I told her to listen to the words. Friday night, E. dedicated it to me and we danced.

As I sat outside with her younger sister, the closest I have to a younger sister myself, and we talked about her life, a praying mantis walked across her dress. I put out my hand and the mantis walked up my arm and stared at me. Normally freaked out by bugs, I brought it over to a flower and tried to set it down. It crawled up my shoulder and stopped. It turned its two large, glossy eyes toward me and looked.

I scooped it back up and brought it over to the flower not before saying quietly to her, “she’s going to be okay”. Twenty minutes later, inside, my husband pulled it off of me again and brought it outside. Apparently her mom just wanted to make sure I was paying attention.

We left New York with a bird house that was on one of the tables, and a feeling that all was right with one of my dearest friends. Her life will be crazy with seven kids, but I only needed one moment to see the way she looked at her new husband to know.

She is home.

Love.

First World Problems

Hair and weight.

The two are so connected in my mind, they’re hard to separate. On that note, I don’t think 2011 is done with me yet.

I went Saturday to get my hair done. I’ve been going to my hair guy for a few years now, and I adore him. The first time I went, it was after a bad, bad haircut. I’ve never considered myself vain. I leave for work in the morning with my hair wet to do as it will as it dries on the train. My morning face routine consists of moisturizer and mascara. Only when I’m meeting people do I do the full face. And always when I’m meeting people, do I do the full face.

For work though, it’s become a joke. The same goes for clothes. As I’ve put on weight, my morning consists of sweaters to hide my midsection and pants that still fit. Looking good has no say. It’s a matter of coverage and practicality. If I could get away with a housecoat, I’d put it to good use.

I’m not happy about these recent developments. Somewhere the plan has gone astray.

So as I went in to see S., he said how he loved the color and we’d continue on. I told him I was thinking about lopping it all off.

“How short?”

“Maybe an inch.”

“Off?”

“No an inch left behind. And platinum.” But as I looked in the unforgiving mirror with the black tent wrapped around me up to my neck, I took a good look at my face, rounded and full, a face I’d be hard-pressed to recognize as mine. I said as much.

In a recent discussion with a dear friend, she wrote me, “There’s that basic philosophy that we humans are simple creatures and require sufficient amounts of just 3 things:  Sleep, Nourishment, Physical Exertion (and/or sex).  And that when one of these is deficient, one of the others take over.  The less I sleep, the more I eat.  Etc…”

I have been working this comment over and over in my brain, and the truth of it is so obvious, yet so hard for me to manage. So basic and spot-on. Two of the three have been minimal as to be verging on reckless, while the other has run rampant, a hunger that can’t be fed, filling up with nothing and then aching.

S., being as all or nothing as I am, understood. He understood when I said that something snapped, and I found myself at GNC looking for a detox program. He understood the need to recreate oneself, the need to create oneself, the need, the need always the need.

Then he got excited. He told me that he had just done a fast, the Beyonce one where you eat nothing and drink this concoction of lemons, water, cayenne pepper and a special maple syrup. He stayed on it for four days, but after three he knew he could continue without a problem, but he found out something about himself. One, he looked in the mirror and looked gaunt. Two, he realized how much of his life revolved around the sociability of food. Meeting with people for a snack and a drink, making dinner for friends, having dinner made for him.

He wasn’t doing the fast to lose weight. He was doing the fast for clarity and he gained it.

Now lest I cloud him in the same silliness in which by now I have clouded myself, let me clarify. He’s leaving in a couple of weeks to spend a month in Haiti, like he does every year. He’ll spend that time assisting a dentist in one of the most poverty-stricken places on earth, going to a village that they have gone for over twenty years to pull teeth, remove tumors, set bones, whatever is needed. I assure you, I am fortunate to call him my friend.

But on this day, we talked about fasts, and with a twinkle in his eye he dangled a carrot. He knows I’ve had my hair short before, and told me that when I get down to whatever weight I’m aiming for, he’d cut my hair off in a young, short ‘do, we’d dye it back to blonde and it’d be on him. He said we, he and I, are one and the same and I needed incentive.

And then I thought, but what if I don’t want my hair short? See? Silliness knows no bounds.

What I need is to get out of my own head and go with him, but alas, my kids are too small. I have trouble leaving them for a day, no less a month, no matter how wonderful the cause. And yes, I know this is a first world issue. But as I look around lately, I see people and so many are so unhappy, from the ones who have nothing, to the ones that seem to have it all.

I don’t see the joy.

I’ve been working on a project lately, and it brought me great joy. I was doing something that I think I’m good at, and hopefully it was helpful to the person.

I need to bring that same critical eye to myself, shine the spotlight down and see if I like what turns up behind the facade. See if I’m the sort of person who wants short hair, see how I feel if I’m not treating my body like crap…see where the girl went who longed for balance though never achieved, at least not thus far, is hiding.

I doubt she’s wearing a housecoat. My money is on some black boots and a leather jacket.

 

Karate Lesson

I took karate in college. It started as a gym requirement (I’ll do anything to avoid team-y sports) and much like when I took astronomy because I heard it was a blow-off class (except I got the physics professor who was teaching it for the first time and he hadn’t heard what I had heard. PHYSICS professor, but I digress.), I got schooled.

I showed up in sweats wanting to put in the time, earn the credit. And then something clicked. Never having any sort of athletic prowess, I loved it. I loved the katas (the forms), I loved the discipline. I loved that when people were talking, the instructors told them to leave. When it was over, I had my yellow belt and I made my way over to the dojo.

The fact that I even thought the university class was disciplined, is laughable. I got to the dojo, and it was a warehouse size space with wooden floors. The back wall was lined with mirrors and to the left were twenty boxes painted on the floor, in two rows, ten feet by ten feet, maybe a bit smaller.

But this story isn’t really about all of that.

I progressed from yellow, to orange, to green belt and was headed toward blue. The class began with some warm-up exercises that went completely outside of everything I had ever been taught about exercise. An example: we were doing the butterfly stretch, feet bottoms together, knees bent out to the sides, hands wrapped around feet, back straight. There was no slow, gently stretching like yoga. You bounced your knees up and down trying to tear the muscles so they’d grow back with more flexibility. If you’ve ever seen Bloodsport, there’s a scene when Jean Claude Van Damme puts his ankle in the noose of a rope and pulls it up until his leg is completely vertical. This is karate.

I’ve always been inflexible, not able to touch my toes ever, and I just accepted it. But that day the sensei, a world-famous instructor although I didn’t know that at the time, five foot three of muscle and sinew walked over and watched as I jiggled my knees frantically trying to get them closer to the wood floor.

Did I mention the silence in this enormous room? There was no speaking allowed. If you had a question, you demonstrated, but more often than not, your questions weren’t what was important. You were there to learn and absorb. Instructors walked around and tapped you if you were doing something wrong. If you didn’t follow through, they’d hit you just inside where you missed it. It paid to be a quick learner. They didn’t hit hard, just enough to get your attention and let you know that you could have been hit hard. There was no explanation, all demonstration.

There I was wiggling my legs like a deranged, cracked-out butterfly and the sensei stopped directly in front of me. He walked toward me and proceeded to put one foot on one knee, and then his other foot on the other knee. The second his full weight was on my knees I felt my inner thighs tearing, burning, searing in pain. I looked straight ahead, tears streaming down my face. No expression, just the tears. He pushed off in a motion that I thought would tear me in half, and jumped back to where he was standing on the floor, both feet landing simultaneously and as far as I could tell without sound. Then again, I was screaming in my head so I may not have heard it. He nodded, a huge pat-on-the-back to get one of his nods, then proceeded to finish his loop around the dojo.

I could barely walk the next day, but I did gain enormous flexibility.

We started with stretches, moved on to our katas, self-defense and then sparring. I loved doing forms, just me and my imaginary opponent, but I detested the sparring. When you’re first starting out and you move up to yellow, you get paired with black belts because they have the best control. They tap you just hard enough to get you to block. You work on your technique along with your ki, your power. It’s about focusing that power.

An orange belt may get paired with a black belt, but more often a brown. By the time you hit green, you are paired with the blue belts or the purples. This is when it gets rough as people don’t have the control, can’t harness the strength. They are strong and powerful and dangerous. It is also how you get better.

I was a green belt soon-to-be tested for my blue (we didn’t know when, he just informed you the day of that he wanted to see your katas), and it was sparring time. We lined up in the boxes according to rank, the lower ranks on one side, the higher ranks on the other. For sixty seconds, you spar finding an uncovered opening to tap. By green belt, you are punching and accurate to a degree, but things move quickly.

I stood facing a brown belt I had never seen before. I was relieved getting a brown not wanting someone out to show off  as the lower belts were known to do. I noticed he had a black piece of ribbon on the collar of his gi that designated he hadn’t been there in a while. It essentially stood as a warning. The buzzer sounded and he attacked, throwing three quick punches to my sternum and only missing because I jumped out of the ring. He wasn’t going for the tap. We bowed back in and I was told not to jump out. This man terrified me. He wasn’t there to teach me something, he was there to prove something. He was coming way to close. He wanted to hit me.

I spent the longest 60 seconds of my life dodging front kicks, side kicks, roundhouses. He was using punches that you would only use in street combat. My only good fortune was that I went everyday and he was rusty. However, he was fast. The buzzer signified 15 seconds to go. My best friend was sparring in the box next to me and both she and her opponent had stopped entirely watching the madman and me. She kept giving me the look to get the hell out of there, along with its follow-up I’m-not-watching-you-die-today and can’t-you-be-crazy-later?, but something in me clicked and I had to stay there until I heard that buzzer. With two seconds to go, sweat soaking my gi, he punched straight into my chest. I deflected it with my right arm but dropped my left arm. Stupid move. He front kicked me to the sternum. The buzzer sounded as white noise filled my ears. I dropped to me knees hard enough that I skinned them on the wood floor. The air was sucked out of the room, I gasped but nothing came in. I began to dry heave. The sensei walked by and did nothing.

Nothing.

We should have had five more minutes of rotations, but the sensei hit the buzzer and we gathered to the front. My best friend wanted to leave, but I wasn’t leaving until class was over. I wasn’t going to let that bastard see me leave.

The last part of the class was when people got the opportunity to spar with the sensei. It was a huge honor, one that I tried my best to never take part in. We sat kneeling around the front,  him in the center, and people would raise their hands to spar. I saw the brown belt sitting in the back, arm down. The sensei looked directly at him and pointed. Every other day, the sensei sparred with each person for thirty seconds. The brown belt stood up and the sensei, in movements you could not see, dropped him repeatedly for 12-thirty second rounds. My relief was palpable. Every time the brown belt bowed assuming he was done, sensei said, “Ai!” and the next round began. He flipped him, down. He tripped him, down. He would be in front, and the next you knew he was behind him and with a short jab to the brown belt’s knee, down again.

Some things brought this memory back today. I wonder what it is about me that made me stay. I wonder why I didn’t refuse to spar with that madman, why I had to finish. He was dangerous and I’m lucky that I ended up just bruised and bleeding. I wonder why I felt such relief that the sensei took care of it. The idea that my being beaten on was some kind of lesson…

But why did I need someone to save me? Why couldn’t I save myself? Would I do the same thing today or was I braver then? Or was the fear to show weakness too great…

How different are we really, than our 19-year old selves?

I don’t think I’m all that different.

Fortunate

I sat in traffic waiting to make the left to get on the highway. A tall man with matted hair stood under the underpass in a long gray t-shirt and dingy jeans, next to a pylon with his back to the cars. He blended in to the gray day, the cold. I don’t know that anyone else saw him.

He pushed his foot downward into a small trench before the steep slope of concrete jutted up vertically to meet the highway overhead. There’s a small flat section at the top. When I lived in Chicago and took the Blue Line into work, I’d stare out the window looking for the people who lived there, or slept there sometimes barely living at all, trying to stay warm through one more night. It became a habit, a mild obsession to look for these people. Often I wouldn’t see them, just there remnants, a tattered blanket, a square of tarp, some discarded bottles, and old torn sleeping bag if the person was fortunate.

Fortunate.

What a loaded word in this world, a world in which fortune has come to mean so much to so many, a bank account that can pay a mortgage, a new car, a crib for a baby, clothes, food. Sometimes it means that the rich made the right investment, or didn’t lose too badly when others lost more. Good fortune.

Today I saw this man as he tested the ditch and then gingerly stepped down and behind the pylon where I couldn’t see him. He didn’t have a piece of cardboard with a markered-note about being hungry, being out of work, being out of luck, being out of it, the grand it we all aspire to.

He didn’t have a bag, or a blanket. He didn’t have anything at all. I turned off the radio, the Christmas music obscene as I looked for where he had gone, waiting my turn to inch ahead where I’d have a better view. I was now out from under the overpass and moved to the left turn lane. I had a complete view of the area behind where he had gone, but he wasn’t there. Cars began beeping as I craned my neck looking to the far left where he had been.

I hadn’t taken my eyes off of the spot. He wasn’t moving quickly so I know he didn’t dart out. The only blind-spot I had was two feet toward the far side, and he would have had to be sitting in the ditch. It had rained and snowed so it was bound to be muddy. There was a good chance a man between forty and sixty was sitting in a muddy ditch while all of us in our cars were out and about buying things we most likely didn’t need for people who most likely didn’t need them.

Maybe he was just taking a break and had nowhere else to take it where he wouldn’t be bothered. Maybe the holidays were just too much for him and a muddy ditch in thirty degree weather was better than any alternative he could come up with.

Maybe he had no alternative.

I only bought a few small things that day. It seemed surreal that the holidays have the highest suicide rate and here I was out shopping. Everything seemed silly, extravagant, absurd. Because it is.

I thought of the disappointment that there wouldn’t be the perfect things under the tree. Then I drove over to a music store and picked up an edition of Adele’s “21″ for Easy Piano. I also picked up a guitar book listing all of the chords by picture.

I saw a Tom Petty songbook and picked it up. “Freefallin’” was there. I left with the three books and while my husband was out shopping with the kids I sat in my quiet house and for the first time in years I sat down to the piano and plunked out the keys until the melodies sounded decent because music matters. Writing matters. All people matter regardless of what the politicians would have us believe.

People having a warm, safe place to be matters.

In this holiday season, that is my wish. I wish that people get a warm safe place, a momentary break from whatever demons chase them down trying to crack them in half. Whether the demons are from broken dreams, mental illness, booze, drug addiction or a combination, I wish them a moment of respite, a moment when the see that they are worthwhile and that they know they are not forgotten. Even if just for a moment.