The God of Small Things

I just finished reading this book called The God of Small Things, and I was thinking it over (as I always do). I liked the book, but it wasn't exactly the BEST book I've ever read. It was well written, and I've certainly never read anything like it before. But I think what struck me the most were the characters - they were all incredibly flawed. The author exposed the most vile and ugly parts of human nature, even the parts of ourselves that don't always make sense; jealousy, love, anger...Through it she was able to really draw you into the family dynamics of the people that the story was about, something usually way too complex to develop in the short space of a book.

Anyway, there was a scene where the family had been out at the movies, one they had travelled for two hours to see and were very excited about seeing. The son ended up sick and they had to leave the movie early. The daughter who was angry with the mother for making them leave early, insulted her.

Her mother asked her, "Do you realize what you've just done?"

The daughter knew she had crossed the line and was expecting to be punished, simply replied, "What?"

The mother answered, "When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less."

It is such a simple statement, but it is so true. In the grand scheme of life, in our relationships when we date, and with our friends, and I think to a lesser degree with our families, it holds entirely true. Every failed relationship I've had started to weaken after each argument, until eventually there was nothing left. It was because it is harder to love someone when they hurt you; you begin to close yourself off and protect yourself and grow angry towards the person who hurt you.

I think it holds especially true in a marriage. The divorce rate is so high today, and we see all the time the effect on couples who get married because they are "in love" and then fall apart. I think a large part of it is not understanding what true love really is, that it is much deeper than the "in love" infatuation and desire you feel for someone when you first meet them. But I also think it is because we so often get caught up in our righteous indignation and anger and say things we shouldn't. Even if they are the truth, there are some words better left unspoken. And I think it takes commitment on both sides of a marriage to not say things in anger or to hurt, and when they are to not let them make you see the person as lesser in your eyes.

I also know that is easier said than done. We all hope to have a love that will transcend all, but in the end we are only human. We have all said things that have hurt, and we have all been on the receiving end at one point in time as well. And somewhere in there, our love is never the same. It serves as a daily reminder to be careful what you say, that our words can so often be weapons, and we so often use that weapon to hurt people we love.

Attitude of Gratitude

My friend "Snowflake" is reading a book called the Attitude of Gratitude in an attempt to be more grateful for the many blessings in her life. She has taken up the challenge, and issued it in turn, to find 10 things each day for which you are grateful.

I'm not sure I can do it every day, but for today...

1. A warm cup of French Vanilla Cafe after the kids go to bed - the perfect end to a great day!

2. Georgia Winters - it was a balmy 68 degrees with a slight breeze today, making it perfect!

3. A good book, which make you think, tells some hidden truth in your own soul, and even inspires you.

4. Mail drops...We got word today they're going to send mail out to my husband's submarine. I know he's only been gone a week, but it has been a really long week. And you know what they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. It's so much easier to see the good in someone when you miss them so much - he truly is my other half, the one who completes me. And it's not that I need him beside me, it's that I want him beside me.

5. Shopping for new clothes! I bought new shorts today, and thanks to a month of working out every day, I'm back to my old, pre-baby size. Can you see me doing the happy dance? Makes that 200 sit-ups a day worth it!!

6. Open-toed shoes!

7. My children - they have really risen to the challenge this week my husband has been gone. They've been incredibly helpful and thoughtful.

8. Chik-Fil-A and their yummy waffle fries. Man did I miss those when we were in Connecticut.

9. Ending the day with a clean kitchen, because that means, more importantly, that I wake up to one.

10. My husband's car - I've been driving his car while he's been gone, and it is so fun. After 8 years of the dreaded minivan and the curse of the soccer mom stigma, I LOVE driving something smaller. Open up the sun roof, crank some good music...

And now, I'm thankful that it's bedtime, and I have the most comfortable new mattresses on the planet!

A Single Step

So you know what they say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Today I took my first step.

Throughout my life I have kept a mental list of all the things I would like to do, try, learn, places to visit...(As I think we all do.) One of my goals was to learn to play the guitar.

So today, after many weeks of painstaking research about models, books, size, the whole left-handed right-handed thing, I finally bought a guitar, case, strings, picks and a book and DVD set that claims it can teach even the most inept beginner how to play.

I ordered it online, and I CANNOT wait for it to arrive. I feel like a little kid on Christmas Eve with childish anticipation. I love that - that feeling of sublime elation when you almost don't want to get what you desire because then the joy of anticipation will be over. Almost...

In all honestly though, it almost excites me more because it is something I have always wanted to learn. It makes me happy to think I'm taking steps to make some of my dreams come true.

William Wordsworth

Sometimes I come across a quote that speaks so directly to my heart, it feels as if it echoes something inside me. Today it is Wordsworth...

"More like a man flying from something that he dreads, than one who sought the thing that he loved."

When I left home to go to college, I think that everyone was so sure that I knew what I wanted to do and be like, where I wanted to go, the life I wanted to live. But the truth is that I had only a vague idea. I wasn't really running towards something, some dream, so much as I was running away. The life that my parents had always led, in a small town, in what felt like an antiquated life frightened me. It was the last place, and certainly the last life I envisioned for myself.

I did run, from high school, from college, from Maine, as if in running I could find my answer, the elusive something waiting out there for me.

I kept on running, only to end up in Saint Mary's, a town in so many ways like home. But I know that I could never go back. It holds too much pain and memory. It knows too much of me and the parts of my life I have tried so hard to forget and leave behind.

I often wondered if that was the very reason I have to go back - to find the peace and comfort that could only ever be found on the other side of remembering, and forgiveness.

Somewhere along the way I realized that roads aren't for destinations but for journeys. In my running I came back to myself, one day and one place at a time.

And now I am where I should be. I carry a small piece of Maine in my heart like a talisman. It often warms me when the days and nights get long. I can lose myself in my memories of the ocean - the surf and the sand, and then somehow things seems all right.

Life is Sucky Sometimes

Okay, so I know that this is not even remotely deep or profound today, but sometimes you've just got to bitch and moan. So my hubby sailor left Monday morning (at the butt crack of dawn) to head out to sea for the first time in three years. Can we just say this was not exactly an auspicious start to the week. I mean really, did it have to be Monday morning? My three year old woke up way too early and spent the entire day driving everyone crazy, so that by the time her bed time rolled around, my older two actually asked me if it was always going to be like that when daddy's gone. After the 10 hellish patrols we put in the last time my husband was on sea-duty - in which everything that could happen did, the pessimist was thinking, yeh, pretty much. But I did my best to overcome my bad attitude so as not to sour them, and said of course not, blah, blah, blah. You get the idea.

Yesterday, smooth sailing. Caught up on a few projects I needed to get taken care of, cleaned the house top to bottom, ended the day with a movie and bowl of popcorn, enjoying the sole possession of the remote control.

Today was my oldest son's field trip. Of course as soon as they got where they were going he started throwing up. I was by then 40 minutes in the opposite direction trying (and I say trying) to get Easter all wrapped up, when the school calls me. By the time I would make it up there to pick him up, they would be leaving to head home anyway. I finally meet him at the school when they get back, and he comes dragging in wearing his winter jacket (it was like 75 out today) and not looking so good. His lips were cracked and purple, and he was carrying his uneaten lunch, including his juice. So he had been out in the sun on this field trip all day long and had not had anything to drink, nothing, zippo, big fat nada in the Georgia heat, I mean, duh. Can we get any dumber? And they honestly couldn't figure out why he was sick!?!?!?!?!? I wanted to hurt someone at this point...

I get him home, hydrated and doctored up with Ibuprofen to get his fever down, and within an hour he ate lunch, got up off the couch and went and played the rest of the day. Dinner appetite was fine, and he's bummed that he can't go to school tomorrow because of their 24 hour fever-free rule.

I've got enough stress in my life managing our house, finances and three children while my husband is gone that I really don't need some idiot making my job harder because they can't even exercise common sense and get the boy a drink. ARGH!!!!!

All I could think of was that line in Robots where Fender asks Rodney, "Had a bad day? Just remember there's another coming tomorrow!"

Okay, big sigh of relief...tomorrow is another day. I am going to go have a glass of wine and soak in a very long, very hot bubble bath until all my troubles melt away and I can go to bed rejuvenated and ready to be open-minded and even excited about the possibility of another day!

And hugs to you Snowflake, MIL will soon be gone and you will be free once more!!!

Who is Part of My Life

Snowflake tagged me for a meme yesterday, so here goes.

"There is so much to be done, there is so much that can be done. One person - a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, a Martin Luther King, Jr. - one person of integrity can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs." an excerpt from Elie Weisel's Nobel Prize acceptance speech Dec. 10, 1986

If we do not change the direction we are headed, we will end up where we are going. - Chinese Proverb

Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside awakens. - Carl Jung

Nothing happens...but first a dream. - Carl Sandburg

Holding anger is poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves. - Mitch Albom, from The Five People You Meet in Heaven

They're certainly entitled to think that, and their entitled to full respect for their opinions. But before I can live with other folks, I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. - Harper Lee from To Kill a Mockingbird

And lastly, not a quote but a poem - I love it too much to leave it out though...

Come my friends 'tis not too late to seek a newer world. For my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunsets and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are we are, one equal temper of heroic heart. May weak by time and fate but strong by will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. - Tennyson

My Shelter

The chill swept
over me
complete
achingly
hauntingly
I reached
for you
sure you would
give me warmth
comfort me
complete me
you were
already gone

it seemed colder
to me then

I pulled your
pillow to me
smelling you there
as if the
nearness of you
would be
my shelter