Set Free

What's Next?

I went to see the doctor this week, to check in on my blood pressure and get her advice about how to stay with my life change efforts. After a hiatus (planned) from tracking my food points and a hiatus (unplanned) from regular exercise, I need a little help getting my attitude back in order. I did return to tracking on January 1st, and whatever weight I gained while enjoying the Tastes of Christmas is off again, but my enthusiasm for focusing on this process seemed to be about equal to my excitement about exercising outdoors in sleet or rain. A very busy work schedule over the past ten days did not help, nor does my chronic Eustachian tube problem, which is worse in this kind of weather and particularly aggravated by spending time outdoors.

Happily, the visit to the doctor encouraged me in three ways.

First, she is delighted by my overall weight loss. It doesn't matter to her that I merely maintained over Christmas, because being down 20 pounds since the end of September and 45 since the end of June is what matters. That served to remind me that while living a new way on a day to day basis matters, I need to remind myself of the long arc, too.

Second, my blood pressure looks great. (Or so they tell me. I would have liked to see a number lower than 130-something on top, but they were rhapsodic that it was over 70, instead of the 92 we saw in June and the 82 of September.)

Third, when I got on the old-fashioned scale, the nurse first put the bottom line weight at a number that was too low, and that reminded me that I look better than the numbers might suggest I should.

We talked about all that and more. I indicated that I knew I looked good in clothes but felt a heavy awareness of what lay beneath them.

She suggested it was time to join a gym and start doing some work with weights.

There is a special gym at the University of Southern Vacationland, about a four block walk from my house, that caters to the not young and glamorous among us. They do a fitness evaluation, teach you to use all the machines and basically set up a workout plan for you. I belonged to that gym for about six months when The Princess was a baby, and I remember people stopping me and saying, "You look great. Have you been working out?" It's a little pricier than joining one of the chain gyms, but I'm going to try it for three months and try to get there three times a week. I'm waiting for a call back about the date for the evaluation, but it looks like it will be next Friday.

The doctor mentioned what weightlifting would do for my endorphins, and after my last post, I'm sure you would all agree that getting some action in that area would probably not be a bad idea.

Meanwhile, it's cold and rainy out there, and I'm looking forward to the foot soak event in a few hours. It's a good day for remembering the long arc.

Check Engine, Redux

Some months ago I wrote about the Check Engine light on my car, and at the end of June I finally followed through and went to the doctor.

It has been fairly obvious that my efforts since then have been successful on the weight front, but today was the time to re-check my blood pressure. It had risen to 148 over 92, and that was the major caution raised by the doctor in June.

Today it was 132 over 82.

I can't tell you how relieved I was.

We talked at length about the ways I've been taking better care of myself: going to Weight Watchers, making time for exercise, deliberately slowing down wherever possible. The doctor indicated that the weight range given by Weight Watchers was a little lower than hers and gave me a range to show them as being acceptable to her. It gives me a goal that actually feels reachable and maintainable, since I remember being in that range for more than five minutes at some point in the past.

She gave me referrals for a new therapist. It's amazing what sort of things come up when you are making big life changes, and I would like to have someone to talk to about them.

Finally, we made an appointment to meet again in early January, to see how things are going.

I think she's a very good doctor, and I will do my best to continue being a very good patient.

Keeping At It

Today I went for my annual physical. Please don't laugh when I say "annual," even though you may have heard me say it's been considerably more than a year since I had a check-up of a general nature. But as promised in a post not too long ago, I went.

One of the reasons I avoid going to the doctor for this kind of regularly scheduled maintenance is a dread of the scale and any discussions about my weight. It's been a long time since I undertook any sort of serious efforts in that area, anything that lasted longer than a month or had any formal structure. I knew there would be no avoiding it today.

The doctor is new to me, our new family practice physician, and I liked the way she talked to The Princess at her appointment last month. I told her both how concerned I felt about my overall condition and how anxious I felt about discussing it. She spoke kindly to me and made some suggestions, which I am mulling over this afternoon. 

Meanwhile, I went out walking early this morning with Pure Luck, and I am drinking water.

This post doesn't seem to reflect the emotional roiling that goes on beneath the surface when it comes to the body. I brought home bagel sandwiches from our favorite local place, in honor of #1 Son's return home. When Molly ate his (naughty girl!), I insisted he take mine and started to cry. The sense that I am responsible for everyone and no one is responsible for me eats a hole in my gut. The idea that I ought to be punished for being less than perfect while not judging others constricts my voice.  The notion that I am unlovable opens caverns one upon the other, each leading further and further toward an abyss, and the manner in which I have filled those caverns and tried to keep my balance on the edge of destruction only magnifies how deep and difficult to heal a person's wounds may be.

At 46, locks shorn, I look at a different person in the mirror, a person whose work now seems to be rectifying past behaviors in order to fend off illness and death. It's funny, just the other day I felt positively youthful. Why is that the perception so easy to change, when the others resist amendment?

Ask, and It Shall Be Given Unto You

 

(Left to Right: #1 Son, Songbird and Snowman)

Don't we have great hair?

I'm sorry. What 's that?

You wanted something other than the traditional blogger's pose?

Oh, all right. If you insist.

Bigger versions at Flickr.

Shhhhhh!!!!!

I got my hair cut.

Don't tell Pure Luck!

Late Night Asterisks of Sunday

*The beautiful background music of this late evening blogging session? My dishwasher, working as it should again.

*When Pure Luck suggested a new walking route, I knew it would be longer than the old one, but I went along and kept up the same brisk pace I have achieved the past two days. He said it would be a little longer. Our recently expanded neighborhood route took us about 20 minutes last night, and I was working hard to keep that pace. Tonight we made sure to time the new walk, I kept up a similar pace for 35 minutes! Yay, me! The trick is to have 35 minutes available to take the darn walk.

*I am seriously drinking a lot of water.

*I am embarrassed to admit, however, that the whole time I was preaching about natural thirst and drinking deep at the well, I had the remains of a Coffee Coolatta sitting on the ledge beneath the pulpit.

*My half-grey hair is making me slightly crazy. I predict a sudden change of hairdresser, probably within the next 48 hours.

*#1 Son gets home tomorrow. He'll be here for less than a week, then he's off to the Big Apple to portray Matthew Brady in a play, complete with beard.

*Snowman returned from UCC General Synod this afternoon with a new hero: Bill Moyers.

*The Princess begins Band Camp in the morning. I think it sounds like fun. She thinks I would be welcome to go in her place.

Check Engine

It all started when the "Check Engine" light came on a few weeks ago. On a hot Wednesday morning, on my way to a clergy meeting at a small town church, wandering on country roads and not entirely sure how to get to my destination, I saw that dreaded portent.

I have a theory that these lights are set to go off at odd numbers on the odometer just to get you to take the car to the dealership.

But what is the equivalent for our bodies? I have to admit that while I am pretty good about making sure other members of my family get to the doctor for regular check-ups, I am bad about it for myself. Part of this is a morbid fear of being told to get my act together around food and weight. I expect the doctor to go at me the way my mother used to do. I remember only too well how she held out the fantasy that weight loss would solve everything else in my life. It certainly did not, and it also opened up a new subdivision in our ever-developing lifelong struggle with one another, in which I put weight back on and she lost it. 

Meanwhile, I'm getting older, and the older I get the more like my father I become. My work takes increasing precedence, and why not when it is so satisfying? It feels important (oh, that word! That verbal equivalent of crack or smack or X or whatever the drug of choice might be!). I'm doing things for others and that is surely more significant than doing things for myself, right?

Back to the "Check Engine" light. As a good owner of an over-driven Solid Gold Volvo, I have the dealership number programmed into my cell phone. I pulled over and called the service department. I explained that the car was behaving normally, but the "Check Engine" light was on, and I was far from civilization and a bit worried.

"It's probably safe to drive," said the man on the other end of the phone, safely ensconced at City By the Sea Volvo.

I didn't have much choice. I kept driving. I made an appointment to bring in the car, but the light went off and I was too busy and weeks went by and...

The other day the light came on again. "Check Engine."

I cannot help but think about the relationship of this car with its 116,000 miles and my 46-year-old body, each of which I drive rather hard without providing adequate preventive maintenance. If the car breaks down or requires too much repair, I can trade it in and start over again. Not so my own vehicle, the carrier of my heart and soul and mind. I only get one.

My attitude about that body, my body, is composed of many conflicting feelings and impressions and responses and judgments. Maybe we all feel this way. The same body that felt powerful and noble bringing life into the world felt threatened with death performing the same feat a few years later. The body that felt rejected and inadequate in what feels like another life has moments of feeling quite the opposite in the now. A body that a few years ago climbed mountains had reached a point of finding a few flights of stairs a nearly insuperable obstacle, a wind-sapping marathon that made preaching feel difficult.

"Check Engine."

I'm pleased to say that after ten days of walking I do feel somewhat better already, but I know how difficult I find it to stay with a discipline of this sort. I become distracted by the "important" and fail to rate care of my own machine high enough. I used to say, after the times in which I had been frighteningly depressed, that I was not afraid enough of dying. Not so now, I have more to do in this life, I hope, and scary as it sounds to me, the hard work of caring for myself seems to be part of it.

GreyBird

  GreyBird 
  Originally uploaded by msongbird.

Since you asked...

How to Turn a Day from Blue-ish to Bright-ish

If you have started the day off having a set-to over almost nothing with a child, followed by an intense conversation with your spouse about one of the things you're never supposed to talk about in polite company (you know the ones: politics, religion, sex, money), followed by a meeting with colleagues who tell you to take care of yourself, right after you've just figured out that the things breaking your budget all seem to be Songbird Self Care line items, here is what I would suggest you do.

1) Call a very good friend. Listen to her, and I mean really listen.

2) Go to a bookstore. You needed something there, right? (It doesn't hurt to get a call from your dear one at exactly the moment you are spying the appropriate Valentine.)

3) Meet up with the one you love. Hug each other. Go out to lunch, even if it is just to Subway.

4) Do the grocery shopping right after, since you can do it faster together.

5) After your work is finished for the day, take a walk in the park with dear one and dogs. A walk will do you good. If you think it's too cold out, put on your long underwear.

6) And when the day is over, remember that 11 doesn't last forever, you didn't get into your line of work for the money, and having every man-jack-dog-cat-girl of them safely tucked under the roof while awaiting a snowstorm is about as sweet as it gets.

Hair Apparent

For several years, while covering my gray hair, I worked with various hairdressers hoping to get my much-adjusted hair to a shade more like the lovely sort of ashy-medium brown it once was, much like the hair of The Princess is now.

Many misadventures occurred, including a cap highlight so bad for my hair I could hardly comb it for a year.

As I may have mentioned, since late November when I had strep followed by a secondary scalp infection and lymphadenitis, I have stopped coloring. I now have about 1.5 inches of my actual hair color (brown and silver) all over my head. And while there are moments I wonder if I can stand the growing out process, yesterday I had a revelation.

That combination of hair colors? Looks just like the color I was hoping to get artificially.

(Especially when viewed with middle-aged morning eyes not yet wearing glasses.)

The Thing

Long Ago:

My friend rents The Thing.
I don’t like horror, but he wants to see it,
and I go along. 

With men, I am trained to go along. 

Now:

A friend expresses a strong opinion.
I question it. I question him.
He tells me firmly why he's right;

there is no space to disagree.

And suddenly my chest feels pressure from A Thing,
A Thing that will no longer stay inside,
Be sweet and cute and patient and kind. 

NO!!!! A Thing yells. 

I grab my coat, say, what time is it? Is it time to go?
I want to go, I say; I think, I want to fly. 

I feel like shouting,
but the raised voice statements are about me.
I feel REDUNDANT!!!!!!!!!
I feel, I feel, I feel—
I hold it back, I blame it on myself. 

A minute later I’m not sure what I said.
I’m back in my head, trying to explain.
Safe in thinking. 

What is this Thing in me straining to get out?
This is no songbird perched on the door of her cage. 

This Thing is voracious, primitive:
This shadow archaeopteryx,
This bellowing dragon. 

I’m not sure I can keep her caged.
I’m not sure I can keep you safe. 

Don’t tell her she doesn’t know the Truth. 

She will not go along.

Stingray

I wasn’t a fan of the Crocodile Hunter, mostly because I have a morbid fear of shiny and slippery creatures. I don’t hate them, but I don’t like to see people near them. But Steve Irwin’s death struck me, and I found myself speaking of an old wound in this way:

“It feels like a barb in my chest, and I want to pull it out, but I don’t want to die trying.”

Sometimes exploring an old wound does feel life-threatening.

For many years I’ve felt an odd pain just below the left clavicle. It is authentically tender, but it’s not an injury or an ailment of a physical nature. It seems to be the place I manifest old emotional pain.

Once I had a dream. I was the daughter of a senator, but the setting was Roman, an “I, Claudius” sort of environment of sheer curtains and opulent furnishings. Alone in my room, I am suddenly set upon by a group of men, including my father, who tells me I am a disappointment and stabs me with a short knife, just in that spot.

Ouch.

I once did some work with a person who used sound therapy. (Don’t ask. I’ve tried everything once.) She had a vision of me as a woman in a canoe, shot in that spot by an arrow.

Something sharp does stick there. It’s the place I feel the hurt when I am misunderstood or undervalued or judged (to my mind) unfairly. It particularly hurts when I am attacked simply because I have asked for the truth or tried to tell it myself.

I could make a list of the people in my life that inflicted those wounds, and I’ve tangled with some of them, trying to get them to face reality. But sometimes they simply cannot. They are not capable of going there. I ought to be able to see it, yet I hang on for dear life, thinking, “Oh, if only he/she could see I’m right about this, our relationship could be closer, deeper, more authentic!” They are the “friends” or relatives who are quick with the critique, but not so eager to lend any actual support. They are the people who don’t appreciate the kind of gifts that led one of my CPE friends to call me a “spiritual detective.” I see myself as swimming along like the Crocodile Hunter, searching for what is interesting and real. They see me as a threat and react defensively.

My husband asked about one such relationship, “Why wasn’t the first time she hurt you the last?” It’s a good question. I want to say it’s because I believe in working things through, but this week I’ve realized it’s the inner relationship in which this dynamic refuses to be broken.  I can come up with strategies to let go of people who don’t understand or appreciate me, but how do I do it with part of myself? I need to find a way, because it is my own sting that can be most deadly.

Trip Odometer

On Monday, I set the trip odometer after I had been on the road for about two hours, when I stopped to fill up the tank on the Massachusetts Turnpike. I realized that before the trip was over, I would see my car turn over to 100,000 miles. Now, she's a Volvo, and as St. Casserole says, that means she's just getting broken in; I'd like to think she is no further than mid-life.

I bought the car just after I turned 40, an "executive program car" with 11,000 miles and no marks suggesting anyone had so much as touched the leather upholstery. Five years and 90,000 miles later, she bears the marks of children and dogs: crumbs, slobber, sand from the dog park, hair that will not come off the upholstered ceiling in the dog section, heel scuff marks on the backs of the front seats, some sort of red food or drink gumming up the back seat floor. You may wipe the leather, you may plead with the leather, you may weep upon the leather and dry it with your long hair, but it will never look the way it did on that May afternoon in 2001.

I spent last night at the home of Childhood Friend. We had not seen each other since 1994. We both admitted some anxiety about what to wear and and an awareness that we have aged since last we met. On that day, at her mother's house in Jane Austen's Village, we talked hurriedly as her young children played. We discussed her plan to go to law school that fall, and my hope to be at seminary that year, too. Her marriage was ending, and mine was difficult, and I remember having a sense of relief that there was someone from my past whose life included adjustments and realizations and new beginnings.

Last night we sat on her bed and I remembered the many nights we spent together as girls in the high, old-fashioned bed in her childhood home. Her home now feels very familiar, in part because there are some familiar pieces of furniture, and in part because it has similar features, but in largest measure because she shares with her late parents a gift for hospitality and a disarming personality. It was a gift to have a friend so close that waking up with her leg flung over me was only natural.

Since last we met there have been more changes in both our lives than we could easily count. As I drove away today I found myself thinking, "Oh, I wish I had asked this," and "Why didn't I tell her about that?" I don't feel as sure as I used to that there will always be some other opportunity to share these things, that we will be able to reset the trip odometer over and over again in this life. I'm grateful for the chance to have this time together.

On the Garden State Parkway, I counted down toward the big rollover, comparing the tenths of miles on the trip odometer with the whole miles on the odometer, and in Elizabeth, New Jersey, I celebrated being in the middle of life, my car's and mine, awake to the passage of time and the things that matter.

Adding Insult to Injury

It's been very hot here the past few days, and I have a sunburn to boot, and my car is in the shop with a broken air conditioner and has to have new tires and various filters, too, and we were part of a localized Internet/cable/digital phone outage for about 10 hours today, all of which made me cranky.

But the worst moment of all came when #1 Son and I went to the fancy-schmancy whole foods store to buy sushi after I came home from a meeting tonight. When the cashier handed me the receipt I looked down and saw these words:

SENIOR DISCOUNT.

And what a smug expression she had on her face as she gave this old lady her due. Due in about, oh, I don't know, ten years?

I was getting carded well into my 30's, and it was just a couple of years ago that the guy at the coffee shop asked if #1 Son and I were brother and sister. I have to admit this was a blow.

(But I did not offer to give back the $2.37.)

Hearing Aids for the Middle-Aged

I am washing the dishes while wearing my iPod Nano. The music on both the Nano and my iTunes is a mish-mash of old favorites I've purchased from the Apple Music Store, my favorite show music CDs and the more contemporary fare loaded on by my sons.

As I put away clean dishes, the graceful strains of Yo-Yo Ma playing the Appalachia Waltz are superseded by something that starts loud and gets louder. It's Rockapella, singing Eye of the Tiger, and oh.my.gosh. I can't remember how to turn the volume down!!

I whip the little leather case open and start rubbing my thumb over the little dial. It gets louder!! I say to #1 Son, "How do I turn this down?!?!!"

"Mom," he says, "I can hear you. You don't have to shout. You're being ridiculous."

I take out the ear buds. He shows me how to turn down the volume. (You rub your thumb *around* the dial, not up or down.)

Why does this feel like a preview of coming attractions?

"Angry Enough to Die"

But God said to Jonah, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?’ And he said, ‘Yes, angry enough to die.’ (Jonah 4:9, NRSV)

I seem to have no end of connections to this week’s lectionary passages. Friday night I was just as ludicrously, futilely angry as Jonah, and I certainly felt angry enough to die. It’s an unjust world, and in those minutes I was the target of the greatest injustice.

At least that’s how it felt.

It started with a brief interaction with an apparently cranky-at-the-end-of-the-day person to whom I used to be married. He reacted to, rather than answering, a question about the weekend schedule for our two-household family, and in that reaction he struck an old nerve. When we could speak away from the children, I asked what that was all about. He nearly apologized, but stopped short and instead turned it around in my direction. “I don’t call you on it when you’re inappropriate.”

That word—inappropriate—goes to my deepest wounded places.

Remember the other day, I was writing about my mothers and how I wanted to finally get over this old misery that keeps bothering me no matter how much time goes by? Just to be sure, “the voice of the Lord came to (Songbird) a second time.” (See Jonah 3:1) And soon I was slamming doors and scrubbing the bathtub in manic fashion and finally sitting down at the top of the stairs for what became an unpleasant cry while lying on the little rug at the top of the stairs with my legs hanging over and tears running down into my ears.

The worst kinds of thoughts were running through my mind, as they do when this particular sore spot is aggravated. Obviously no one will ever think well of me, including my children, who would be better off without me…

“Yes, angry enough to die.”

I have a kind husband and an understanding almost grown-up son who witnessed the first part of the difficulties, and the three of us went out to dinner and talked about why I respond the way I do.

“That’s old stuff,” my wise son said, surprised that it stays with me.

It’s that word inappropriate, I explained. I was inappropriate from the very beginning of my life, before the beginning of my life, the result of an inappropriate set of actions.

“Nothing that resulted in you could be inappropriate,” he said.

I started to feel a little better. After all, I do have these rather nice children, don’t I? And a life partner who actually works at understanding me. We have what I dreamed of, we really do. The only thing that threatens it seems to be my inability to let go of the past, my stubborn inability to release my personal people of Nineveh and let God decide what to do with them. I am too willing to lie in the heat of the day, angry enough to die.

Jonah, Jonah, Jonah.

I don’t want to be like you, Jonah.

I felt some of the after-tremors again today as I sat in the office waiting to hear about the congregation’s vote on the budget. Could I respond to bad news in a way that didn’t involve self-destructive anger?

As it turned out, the events of the day did not put me to the test. The budget passed, which is to say I'm getting a raise, and I sat down to a quite nice potluck lunch. I even came home with an entire chocolate cake.

There is still work to do on the inner Bird. Next Sunday’s gospel lesson has Jesus casting out an unclean spirit. Maybe that will help.

On Truth

One of the things I hope for at mid-life is to finally get over the issues I've been working through for, oh, 44 years now. What's the truth of who I was born to be?

In Bird by Bird, Anne LaMott writes:

"But you can't get to any of these truths by sitting in a field smiling beatifically, avoiding your anger and damage and grief. Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We dont have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not to go into. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in--then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home."

I've spent my whole life looking for the mother I didn't have. That didn't change when I came to understand my mother better, or even when I met my birth mother. I still felt the lack of someone who would simply love me unconditionally, someone who would give me what I have given my children: a love that acknowledges our individual peculiarities and deficits and embraces them right along with the giftedness and wondrousness.

In this family, we're pretty open about naming and embracing both ends of the spectrum. I don't know how unusual that is. I just know that in my both my growing-up family and in my much more limited experience of my birth family, the accepted practice is to ignore or deny the characteristics we don't like for as long as possible, and to jettison the person who is trouble when necessary.

I'm not a sandbag on the side of a hot-air balloon. A hot-air balloon is a pretty poor model for family living. It's too fragile, too easily upset. A family needs a vehicle that is more grounded. A person needs a vehicle that is more earthed.

Being adopted, or more particularly my relationship with my birth mother, has been a touchy subject for some years now. At Christmas I decided to write her a letter; it had taken me a year to respond to her letter of the year before, a letter that came over two years after I wrote to tell her Pure Luck and I were getting married. As soon as I put it in the mail, I knew I had begun it the wrong way; trying to use humor in reference to myself and probably setting the wrong tone by seeming to criticize the time it took her to last respond.

I can't seem to do it right. And seeing that about myself, I want to--

you guessed it, didn't you?

Jettison the weight that is upsetting the emotional balance.

I was in Jungian Analysis for many years with a wonderful Italian woman. Whenever we got too close to the mother stuff, I would run away.

Yesterday in my mentoring group, the retired pastor who leads us spoke of those times when we feel we need our mothers, when we just want to be loved exactly as we are. Oh, God! That's the last time I want my mother, either of them. The last time.

But.

I remember in analysis how I had so many dreams about my inner masculine, so many romantic dreams. I remember being told that the important thing was to heal the inner breach, not to paste over it by attracting a real life man to fill the emptiness.

The truth is, I can't go back and get a new mother. It's a little late for that. I have to find that all-loving mother in myself, give that love to myself.

Why is that so hard? How do I let go of disappointment instead of ignoring, denying or jettisoning what is difficult?

On Sunday, during our time of Sharing Joys and Concerns, a church member asked us to pray for a co-worker who just adopted a baby. When we prayed, I did something I haven't done before. It surprised me to hear the words coming out of my mouth. I prayed for the adoping mother and the new baby, and then I prayed for the mother who had surrendered her child.

I'm still grappling with this. Would it have been better, almost twenty years ago, not to contact my birth mother? After all, I started it. Would it have been better to confine her to the role I ascribed to the birth mother we prayed for on Sunday? That role is loving enough to give away what we cannot care for ourselves, or at least that's how I named it.

But it seems like whichever mother had raised me, even if it had turned out differently, I would have had a mother who wanted me to conform to an image, a pattern, a form that had nothing to do with who I actually am.

I have been so in love with each of my children~their beauties, their oddities; I can't help wishing someone had been as besotted with me.

Highlights

Highlights 2005 004
Originally uploaded by msongbird.

Just me and my shadow, taking pictures in the powder room.

Untamed Hair

Highlights 2005 003
Originally uploaded by msongbird.

Yes, only a day has gone by, and the "product" is still in my hair, but the back already looks like is hasn't been brushed. Nature is triumphing over civilization.

Hair

Gimme a head with hair, long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming, steaming, flaxen, waxen
Give me down to there, hair!

Today, I did it. I went to the hairdresser and let a professional take charge of my grey hair dilemma. The young lady cut my hair a couple of months ago as part of a fundraiser for Juvenile Diabetes research. She works for the sister of Fair Chair at a cute salon not far from home, and I liked the haircut, so I thought, "What could it hurt? I'll let her do color."

She's not much older than #1 Son.

I felt a little old sitting there in the chair as she ran her fingers through my unruly, overly frizzy mop of hair which did no credit to her previous good work. We settled on a darker brown than I had used at home, one that is closer to my natural fairly dark brown. She suggested throwing in a few highlights. (In my mind, the cash register went Ka-ching!) I remembered how much I had liked the haircut and said yes.

While she left me to "process," I read an article in Vanity Fair about Camilla Parker Bowles. I hope I am nicer-looking than she is. Also nicer.

Let the sunshine
Let the sunshine in
The sunshine in...

After the "processing" and the shampoo, I moved to a chair on the other side of the room, near a window. This is when I realized that her hair was a combination of red and blonde that looked almost pink in sections. I began to wonder what my hair was going to look like when it dried.

She put a few more layers in this time. It's okay, I guess. It's still long in the back, which pleases Pure Luck, but it means no more French Braids or secure ponytails. For most of the blow-dry I was turned a bit away from the mirror, so it was a bit of a shock when she turned me toward it and I saw that my bangs were blown so large they looked like I had rolled then on cans.

"How do you like it?" she asked with a smile.

Pause.

"I really like the color!! I like the highlights, too, they're so cute!"

Another pause.

"But I think maybe the bangs are a little too big for me." I could imagine people unable to focus on my sermon due to the fascination of the bangs. I thought of a woman we know who carries a Bichon Frise in her pocketbook and drives a Mercedes; her bangs are that big. I'm not rich enough to wear bangs that big and round.

She fixed the bangs.

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation

I have sort of big hair. It was always pretty straight until about five years ago, and then it seemed to develop a life of its own. It makes me wonder why I spent all that money on perms and things of that nature.

The style these days is to blow the hell out of all that big hair, after first taming it with "product." (At least that seems to be the style in City By the Sea. Those of you living in more sophisticated urban centers may know differently.) Other than the Coke can bangs, my hair was astonishingly flat.

The first person to mention this was #2 Son when he arrived at church to help at the Roast Beef Supper. I was up in my little garret office, and he came looking for me.

"Your hair. It's different."

"Yes, I know. She put highlights in it."

"No, it's flat. It's really, really flat."

I'm glad he told me, because you see I had no idea! (*&^$in' flat hair.)

"Don't worry. I won't be able to copy this."

How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy To Be Hard; Easy to be cold

At the Roast Beef Supper, I discovered that young girls find my new hair situation fascinating, while most other people look perplexed, except for women in my age bracket who praised it like they should.

Pure Luck comes over at the end of the supper to mop the floors. He came up behind me and said, "You look different."

I turned around and looked up at him. (He is, after all, eleven feet tall.)

"Is it bad?"

"It's just...different."

Then I turned again and saw her. The Princess was coming the length of the church hall, and as she came closer her smile grew wider and brighter. Finally she was bouncing up and down with glee.

"Mom, you look awesome!!"

When the moon is in the Seventh House
and Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars.

Mood Elevators

When my grandmother went around the bend after a series of small strokes, she drove my mother crazy. In the midst of this, my parents were planning my first wedding. Mom went to the family doctor and asked if he would prescribe something for my grandmother, "maybe some of those mood elevators?"

He shook his head sympathetically. "I won't do that, but I will write a prescription for you and one for Songbird."

I don't think my mother ever filled hers, but in the high-tension final days before that big Southern wedding with 300+ guests, she started doling out the Librium to me. Let's just say I floated through the whole thing. Maybe the Runaway Bride could have used some. (By the way, I didn't develop a habit, but I was relieved to find them in the side pocket of my overnight bag about a year later when we had traveled to a family funeral and the mood was, shall we say, tense.)

As I lie here curled on the couch, using my laptop sideways while pondering the mysteries of peri-menopause, I find myself mulling the mood elevators that have come and gone in my life: food, friends, TV shows, music. For instance, I remember cooking many a dinner while Star Trek: The Next Generation played in the background. I rarely looked at the screen; I just liked the sound of Captain Picard's voice--better than a glass of wine for this seldom-if-ever drinker.

Here are some of my mood elevators that don't come from a pharmacy:

TV--I just love "Lost." In fact, as I was lying here, #2 Son pointed out that I had something to look forward to later: a fresh episode this evening.

Food--Well, there's chocolate. I love powdered Ghirardelli in my coffee. I adore Stonyfield Farm ice creams, especially Cookies'n Dream, the best ice cream ever. If you haven't had their ice cream, go visit your local chi-chi purveyor of whole foods. You won't be sorry. But the best mood elevating food ever, bar none, is the Apocalypse Chocolate Cake (via Camera Obscura and The Cake Doctor).

Music--Show Tunes!! I once told a friend I needed to go back and close my car windows, because someone might steal my CDs. She snorted, "They're show tunes!" Something about the musical appeals to me, what can I say. As a child, I wanted to be Julie Andrews when I grew up.

Books--But books are the best. When I'm really glum, I turn to the familiar books that feel like worlds into which I can escape. After a difficult pregnancy loss, I escaped to the realm of Jane Austen, and there I stayed until, after reading every page and every word, I finally felt ready to peek out into my world again.

What are some of your mood elevators?

Scrambled Eyes

It's been nine days since I brought home my new glasses with the cute Nine West half-rim frames in Blue Violet and the frightfully expensive progressive lenses. And for nine days I've been contending with nausea so pervasive that I began to wonder if I might be pregnant.

They seem to work pretty well for me when all I need to do is look up and down (knitting while watching TV for instance), but not so well when I have to look from side to side (virtually everything else). The vertigo and headaches of the past week may just be due to my already damaged eustachian tube, but the glasses seem to have exacerbated them.

It may be that it is time to release the dream of one pair of glasses.

I'm pretty sure these things didn't come with a money-back guarantee.

Is there anyone out there who can share a happy story about reacting badly to progressive lenses than magically adjusting to them?

My checkbook and I would welcome hearing them.

And, no, I'm not pregnant. That would really be a mid-life crisis.

The UnGreying of Songbird

The UnGreying of Songbird Originally uploaded by msongbird.

Wouldn't you know that the best picture I got was taken *before* I noticed it would be a good idea to clean the bathroom mirror? At Flickr there is also a picture of my hair back, as I so often wear it for church, as well as some others for Flickr friends.

I Think It's Pretty

"I don't think people should have to explain anything! For example, if I should paint my fingernails green- oh and it just so happens I do paint them green- well, if anyone should ask me why, I say 'I think it's pretty!' I think it's pretty, I reply." Sally Bowles, Cabaret

Having spent far too much time angsting over something so simple, I have decided to color my hair and table the question of going grey until age 50. (Kathryn, wasn't that your policy?) Thank you to everyone who weighed in on this question. I feel a bit silly for having made such a fuss about it. But since we're talking about it...other factors that came into play included the following:

~One of my models for greying gracefully is a friend in her middle fifties who is also my massage therapist. I admired her for making the choice after many years of coloring. But when I went to see her recently, guess what? She is coloring her hair again, and it looks great.

~Someone said that Pure Luck would look much younger without his beard. Guess what? He does.

~I am frequently mistaken for someone younger than I am. With the grey hair, guess what? Not so much. It's not that I want to be younger; I'm honest about my age. But I also don't want to look older.

~Mostly, though, I decided I didn't like the way it looked.

So, I used the stuff from the health food store, and I would say it covered 98% or so of the grey. And I think it's pretty. I think it's pretty!

Vanity of Vanities

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

I'll admit it. I have grey hair (despite Phantom's claim to the contrary). I've been coloring it for years. I found my first grey hairs when I was 24 and pregnant with #1 Son. He's 19 now. Feel free to do the math. I was in my early 30's when it seemed like there was enough to make it worth covering. For a long time I colored it myself, but then came a time when I began to pay others to do it.

What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. (Ecclesiastes 1:15)

What is grey, however, can be colored. I spent a fortune on my hair. I justified it as self-care. Then a day came when I actually thought about how much money I was handing over, and it made me feel a little sick.

I changed hairdressers.

Last fall I missed an appointment due to illness, and then it was Christmas and I was both too busy and too poor to make another one. I colored it myself. And then I did it again early this year. And then I let an extra month go by, and I thought, "Hey, it's not so bad to be grey!" I thought about how good it would feel to save the money, and how hard the color is on my hair's texture and what a good example it would set for The Princess to accept aging gracefully.

I mentioned this to my husband. He has heard this all before. The proof is on my driver's license picture, taken two years ago in between hairdressers, when I was growing my grey out, really I was. It's just that I fell into a hairdresser's hands, and --

Sigh.

Next week I'm going to Virginia to visit my family. I've been thinking about clothes and what to pack, and I got a sharp look at myself in the mirror, and I didn't like what I saw. My hair is long, mid-shoulder blade long, and it's a thing my husband really loves, although I don't know if it's as beautiful as "a flock of goats moving down the slopes of Gilead." He says he doesn't care about the grey.

It takes a long time for grey to grow out to that length.

So I've been pulling it back, thinking that at least then there's less of a contrast. Most of what you see just looking at my face is fairly grey, and all that brown is in a braid or a ponytail.

Consider the work of God; who can make straight what he has made crooked? (Ecclesiastes 7:13)

Well, sure. But anyone with $15 and 45 minutes can make grey hair brown again.

Is it wrong of me to care so much? I bought the stuff from the health food store. They don't even test it on animals.

What bothers me is knowing that it's the trip to Virginia that has brought me to this point. My relatives there, the ones who thought selling real estate would be a better career for me than ministry, will look at the grey and they won't see a hip individualist. They'll see a middle-aged woman who "has let herself go."

Friends, what do you think? Am I making this too hard for myself? The box of hair color wants to know.

All this I have tested by wisdom; I said, ‘I will be wise’, but it was far from me. (Ecclesiastes 7:23)

Night Thoughts

Pure Luck has been gone for all of a day-and-a-half, but it's crystal clear from the day I had today how much I depend on him. It's not that we can't manage all right without him...but things go more smoothly when he is here.

For instance, if he had been here today, he would have seized the opportunity to chip off the ice on the front steps when it softened, and I wouldn't have landed on my bottom after my feet flew out from under me. (No permanent injuries, just a bruised palm on the hand I used to grab the railing, my second mistake.)

Tonight we had a family party--the family of my first husband--to celebrate #1 Son's birthday. My children's paternal grandfather, or Papa, as we call him, cooked a delicious chicken fricasee. I had only to provide drinks, bread, dessert and, small thing, a clean house. Ack! Fortunately my dear sister-in-law, Wonderful, turned up early and helped us get organized. She has a gift for the housewifely arts that I sadly do not share. (But call me if you ever need a wedding or a funeral.)

Two glasses of wine later, I inadvertantly referred to my ex as "honey." This happened once before at a holiday gathering, and he told me it was weird that I said "honey" to him. I said, "Would you prefer 'hey there, you s.o.b.?'" And, really, after two glasses of wine, I call everyone "honey."

Papa made some remark about "In Vino Veritas," which raises an interesting question. #1 Son has had some drinking experiences at college, and he's learning by trial and error how much is enough. I, for instance, drink about 10 times a year, and it's unusual if more than 3 or 4 of those times I have more than one drink. Two is the limit. Three would be unthinkable. (Or vomitrocious, even.) After a drink, I am a little giddy, but after two, I am loose-limbed and naughtily frank. Is that the truth about me? In Vino Veritas?

When I was in tenth grade, my Baptist youth group had all its meetings at the home of one of the leaders. He was a newlywed with a beautiful wife. We sat around on their living room floor, because they didn't have furniture for it yet. I loved that group. My pastor's wife was another one of the leaders, my absolute idol. One night near the beginning of the year, she said, "Songbird, you are so refreshingly honest." Six months later, as the year's programs were ending, she told me, "Songbird, you are painfully honest."

Painfully honest. Naughtily frank. Open. Exposed. And, oh Lord, vulnerable.

We all have to learn to cultivate the personae, the masks, that protect our weak spots. I suppose I learned to be more diplomatic as time went by. The more I develop the "pastor" face, the more protected certain parts of me become. Somehow I've had to learn to balance honesty with caring. I find that's much easier to do at work than at home, where I seem to feel I should be able to say whatever I feel, to "be myself."

In Vino Veritas? My son wondered if the grumpy self he experienced when drinking represented his real self. I wonder the same thing about the giddy girl I become. Are these parts of ourselves we hide? Or are they shadows themselves?