Oh look! 50 is on the horizon!

On Wednesday, July 25th, I turn the very even and enviable age of 50. I say enviable  because by the time you reach 50, you've lost friends who never will. I will not deny there is sadness with each birthday I have that those I have loved were not able to reach.  I carry them with me in a pocket in my heart and share my special day with them.

Beyond it being an even-numbered big birthday, as my mother called the preceding four, I've not given the number much thought. At least in my awake mind. For the past six to eight months though, I've had some strange time plays in my dreams.  For months and months now the age comparison of where my parents were at my age and where I was at their age. I've dreamed of memories and celebrations and my parents (and me) so young.  When those first happened, I was unsettled.  But after the familiarity, I calmed down and gained some awesome insight to my parents lives, and clues to this new age I'm about to reach. 

I may cringe sometimes at the rapidly passing time, but never the age.  I have been blessed on this journey.

Would you like evidence?  I have that.  My dear, dear friends texted me earlier this year (January? February?) and reserved the date of Saturday the 21st. They would not tell me anything beyond to save the date.  I wondered, I imagined.  I still do. 

This evening, I got this email:

Greetings!

Attire for Saturday: dressy casual. You know...get dressed up like you're going out for a great night on the town. You may see people you know, you may not. You might meet new people, you might not. You may be somewhere you've never been, or you might be somewhere familiar. Either way...LOOK GOOD!!! But not "formal" good ;o) and bring an extra pair of shoes in case you fall (just kidding) or in case you just need to get comfy.

Bathe. Shave. Brush your teeth. Floss. Put on make-up. Get your nails done...and your toenails.

Be ready to LEAVE YOUR HOUSE @ 7:15 p.m. SHARP!!!

Be prepared for ANYTHING...you might need an overnight bag, you might not. Okay ~ you don't need an overnight bag, but you do need to make sure dogs are cared for so that you do not need to be home at a certain time.

You might be at a new restaurant, or an old favorite. You might not be at a restaurant at all. You might be at our home, or you might be at your home, so they both should be presentable for guests. Or not. I'd say yes...everything should always be presentable for guests.

Here's a definite... YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE A BLAST AND HOPEFULLY BE BLOWN AWAY!!!!

I can't wait ~ stef

See that?  Definitely blessed.  Who knows what's in store for me or what I'll be doing this Saturday, but I'm pretty darn sure I'll be among friends who I'm so happy to be sharing this journey with.

Footwear

These sandals, oh these lovely sandals, are destined for the trash bin today.  These sandals have been my go-to shoes for six summers. They came into my life in April 2006 and I wrote about them when I bought them. I didn't need them at the time but they were such a good deal. They were $60.00 (original price, $150.00), which turned out to be $10.00 per year of wear.  Fair enough.  Two years ago, I had new heels put on them.  Earlier this year, I had one of the straps fixed.  Alas, I've been caught walking in the rain and the strap has broken again. Time for them to go.

I will miss you, oh lovely pair of sandals. 

Raise the flag

One of the appreciations my father passed on to me is that of flying the flag. That man respected the US flag and he flew it proudly from a flag post on the front of every house we called home.  He flew the Texas flag too.  He had Olympic flags, US Equestrian Team flags, nautical flags, and all sorts of colorful wind socks in his collection. 

If my mother would have let him, I think he would have flown every sort of flag and wind sock that caught his eye. On the Fourth of July holiday weekends spent at the family cabin, he would just go ahead and do that. Oh the sound of all those flags whirling and whipping in the wind or lazily flapping atop the breeze. I would stand on that porch, close my eyes and just drink that sound. Such a beautiful sound!

Happy 4th of July to all those proud flag flyers out there.

Almost every paragraph begins with an I

I tend to write more when I am troubled than I do when all is balanced in head and heart. This time is different. I've written twice about my troubles recently. But there's nothing for me to sort out through my words, no epiphany to unearth, nothing to discover, just release. I'm writing because in telling you, I'm not alone. 

I'm living in a story that I've lived in, in one form or another, since I was nine years old. I'm knocking at the door of 50 next month. Forty-one years is a hell of a long time and patience no longer comes naturally. Denial though, at least this time around, is all too eager to take over and run the show. My belief in him was so strong that I was completely oblivious to the screaming evidence so obvious to others.

Is this what my parents went through with my sister?  Is this what they felt like?  When all the episodes piled up, when the crippling knowledge shut down their hopes for her, when the years of work they did for her and money they invested in her, when all of it was for nothing at all, how did they get through it?  How did they survive the theft, the lies, looking at her and watching their beautiful girl become damaged, her skin lose its glow, her eyes darken, her cheeks sunken.  How do you look at that and reconcile what you see with the innocent child in your heart?  You do not.

I watched my sister destroy her potential through years of drug and alcohol abuse. Years of that behavior partnered with years of abusive men. I watched my mother through two nervous breakdowns and years of depression because she simply was not equipped to handle this child of hers and she always wondered and sometimes voiced if perhaps, just perhaps, someone else would have adopted my sister instead of my parents, would that have meant a different life for my sister, was it something she had done? That's an impossible thing to wonder and incredible guilt to put on yourself, but my mother did.  And she could never get her answer because there is not an answer. 

I watched battle after battle between my parents because my father would not give up on my sister and my mother had to do so in order to survive.  Literally survive.  I overheard them argue often about the protection they worked so hard to provide me, the financial struggles it caused, the barrier they so desperately built to keep me from my sister's actions, her boyfriends, her drugs. But you can't hide everything. I watched the devastation when they would discover missing things, sterling platters, guns, jewelry, precious wedding gifts, that my sister had stolen and taken to pawn shops. I hid behind the door as I watched my sister pull a gun on my father.  I wiped plenty of tears and I tried my best to pick up so many broken pieces.

The first time he stole from me was over a year ago. The ring, the watch, the pearls, the diamond and pearl earrings my best friend's parents gave me at her wedding, and more, so much more. It's not the monetary value, it's the sentimental value combined with the shock of someone you love stealing from you. It took me months to crawl out of that sadness, that betrayal.  I lived it again a week ago with a missing camera. And the lies. Again. The denial. Again. The anger at me. Again.

His insistence that he is fine, just trying to live his life without the bullshit. Then the tearful phone call, I need help. Then my telling him the stipulations. And his responding, I'd rather live under a bridge.

His mother said that once. And she did it. She lived under a bridge in San Antonio for three years. By choice. A nearby florist contacted us when the man she lived with under that bridge started to abuse her.  That kind lady accepted my father's monthly checks to buy food and water for sister. Please take care of my daughter.

It slayed my father's heart.  My mother couldn't hear it at all.

And all the while, understand, with all those sad memories of my sister and the brutal truth of her son, I know that he needs help and, like my father, I'm desperate to give it, desperate to save him. How do you help someone who would destroy himself?  How do you help what destroys you?` How far does love really go?

I have dreams now where I'm fighting with my mother.  I've stolen from her and she knows I have and she is angry, very angry with me. She is looking through her room in our old house and she's finding more and more things missing. And I'm looking her in the eye and yelling at her that I did not do it.  She knows better and I know better and yet I still deny it over and over. And the strange thing is that I am angry with her in the dream.  It's horrible to wake from because my mother doesn't appear in my dreams very often but when she does, it's more of a reunion, I'm so happy to see her and she me. This dream is not those dreams.  

But switch the characters, her to me and me to him, and this is my life.

I never wanted to have this in common with my parents. My sister's son now doing to his life and to me what she did to hers and to them.  But here we are nonetheless.  I cannot let go but I cannot be pulled under either. The lies, the drugs, the regrets, the tears, the anger, the assistance over and over, the many chances, all gone nowhere. How do I get through to him?  How do I accept that I cannot?

Man overboard

Letting go.  It's so hard, so challenging, so right, so wrong, so confusing, so, so, so much torture.  I was right about the trouble brewing, right about the storm, right to hold on.  I wonder if I am right to withold the lifeboat even though an entire team put on the life vest.  Applicable metaphors, always aquatic.  Or maybe avian, pushing out of the nest, without a net. 

If I keep picking up the pieces, how will they assemble as lessons for him?  Or, what lessons are they teaching?  What are the lessons here anyway?

But oh the strength, the power of that pull on my heart. 

And the doubt.  Is this the right time?  What if it's too much, not enough?   

When the call comes in, that call of help, is it enough to just listen?  I hope so.  My arms are tied to action. This is a time of hard lessons.  For both of us.

A happy evening

Trouble

Sometimes I wake into the middle of the night to all that darkness, quiet and mystery.  Sometimes, I reach for the covers and pull them just under my chin because even at my age the feeling of being tucked in is a safe one. 

Sometimes I sense it in my bones, what's next.  I don't breathe and I don't dare be so smitten with it all as to knock on wood. No, I know. Trouble is just around the corner.

She can be charming, that one, a crooked smile, a slow and direct wink. Trouble could be what I believe, or it could be my hopes, his explanations, her laugh, a missed heart beat. Trouble loves to be wrapped in words.  Doesn't matter what form it takes, trouble is coming. 

Trouble is that I saw it coming when I woke up.  I could smell it, through the windows. I sensed the way my hair felt flat and sticky on my neck. I sensed it in the air that someone else was breathing.

I can do nothing to stop it. Trouble is here. Maybe not for you, but for me. Trouble is flirting with my focus and tickling my wounds. She wants out, this one. She wants to play.

I sit here at my kitchen table and I wrap myself in my own arms.  Hold on, honey, looks like a storm is coming.

The silence ever after

I imagine she must have made the decision weeks ago. Probably, she'd had it in her mind for a long time. It must have swirled there, melting into sorrow, curling alongside desperation, connecting to a decision.  It swam through her mind as an option, an action.  It would take some planning, she apparently thought.  Confessions, phone calls, apologies. A certain amount of scheduling and mapping out.

She chose a location.

She left a note.

At some point after her parents left the ranch that day, she walked to the stock tank, gun in hand.  I don't know if she dipped her toe in and shivered at the cold, momentarily stalling her from her mission, or if she walked straight in, not bothering to register the temperature or the wild muck of the water saturating her clothes.  I do know that she kept going.  She wanted to disappear, she wanted to be sure. 

I imagine that when she put the gun beneath her chin and pulled the trigger, the sound cracked through the weeping sky. A blue heron was startled, leapt from a tree branch, perhaps screeched before taking high and broad wing. A flock of birds fluttered in confusion across the sky. Somewhere, someone wondered What was that? The cattle jolted to attention, surprised, perhaps turned their heads in the direction.  But the sound had sliced across the horizon by then. Seeing nothing, they returned to their grazing.  A warm breeze blew across the grass, a few low hanging leaves were lifted.  The sun reflected golden on the ripples circling outward across the water. Silence flooded the land again. The clouds moved, the earth sighed. 

The facts are these:  A woman took her life yesterday.  Her body was found today.  A family is broken, parents' lives shattered.  Depression is a dark place and suicide a desperate option.  I've heard it said that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. For those left behind, suicide is a permanent heartache.  There is help, there is always help.  1-800-273-8255 (National Suicide Prevention Lifeline)

Instinct

The two birds built their nest in an empty breaker box on the exterior of the office building. The box's metal door was stuck open, creating a slanted roof that provided  protection from the rain and shade in the afternoon sun. They chose well. I first noticed the pair busily building their nest, flying from here to there with twigs, fibers, bits of grass.  One, the other, both... swooping beneath the metal door and weaving the home for her eggs.  Soon enough, only one bird flitted out, in, out. Sometimes a piece of straw or grass was in its beak, sometimes a wiggling worm.  I stood there for a few minutes each day, watching, smiling. 

Soon enough, the young ones arrived. I never saw them but I did hear them. I heard their hunger and I heard their appreciation. I learned to hear the difference between desperation and appreciation. The parents were attentive. He or she at times arriving at the breaker box at the same time, seeming arguing for space, one giving the food to another, beak to beak, and then flying off in search of more food. A few times, the late arriver would swoop in, see the other there, and fly to the roof just above and wait for the other to fly off and chance to drop down and feed the chicks. I could see the unfortunate worm wiggling in its beak.

Weeks of this, weeks of walking outside on my breaks to watch these two parents care for their family.

Today, they were gone. I noticed the silence first, then I focused on the lack of movement. I had wondered how the parents would teach the chicks to fly.  How could they fly from breaker box to building roof? I wondered if the first flight would be tragic, would a chick fall to the heat of the parking lot below? Had they taken safe flights at night, perhaps to a nearby tree?

I suppose I will never know.  But I do know that they have moved somewhere.  I do know that even in the parking lot of an office building, nature figures her way.

I love that about her.

If you build it, they will tag

Every morning, Monday through Friday, I weave my way through some messed up city construction.  Seems the powers that be want to work on a main road and the freeway that intersects it.  Fine, I know my way around closed entrance ramps and three-lane roads narrowed to two lanes during the busiest times of day. Part of the construction is very high along the feeder, or side roads, along the freeway.  Newly erected walls, wonderful beige blank surfaces on which to paint whatever it is you want to paint in order to make your mark. I have to wonder what the city was thinking by inviting it all.  It's been about a week since the walls were erected, still the frustrating road blocks are there because the road paving has not been completed, and yet those walls are already colored, tagged, designed, customized. I don't have a problem with street art, I actually like it.  But I do have a problem with gang marks and I have to wonder why a city as sophisticated and aware as Houston is would erect a canvas for what my taxes will surely pay, year after year, to be covered.  Along another freeway in this city, metal grids were erected and climbing ivy planted. Those walls?  Green with nature.  Seems that someone missed the lesson.