As a child, I read them all. The fairy tales, the nursery rhymes. Wearing my mom’s high school tiara and prom dress I would dance and sing, confident in the knowledge that some day my own prince would come. When he did, it lacked the expected fan fare. No pumpkin carriage escorted me to a grand hall where we danced the night away. There was no long-awaited kiss that awakened my soul. I didn’t even have a fairy god-mother to turn my average girl-next-door looks into that of a princess. I was on my own for this one. But I was certain we would live happily ever after. Eight years after we said our vows, the judge signed the papers releasing us from the ever-after part. We were happy, unlike most divorcing couples. But I began to realize I hadn’t read Disney’s fine print. If I had only paid attention to the details I could have saved myself years of trouble!

Consider Cinderella. Nice girl. Hard working. Not well-liked by her siblings, but nonetheless catches the attention of the Prince at the biggest ball in town. Or did she? If you reread the story, you realize the Prince was really interested in her SHOE. He searched all over town for the woman that wore that shoe. He wasn’t so much interested in her, he had a shoe fetish is all. It should have told Cinderella something right then and there about Mr. Charming. My guess is he had a closet full of designer clothes and walked just a little light in his own loafers if you catch my drift.

Snow White. I have two words for you. Seven dwarfs? Anytime seven men spend that much time together it isn’t a good sign and these seven lived and worked together. Did any of them ever make a single move on ol’ Fair-skinned herself? Nope. Instead, she falls asleep by a spell and sleeps until her prince arrives. What took him so long? My guess is he might have been more interested in the dwarfs.

Little Red Riding Hood. I learned in my Children’s Lit course in college that this story is full of underlying tones of male dominance, submission and a theme of conquest. On second glance, it really seems to be to be a story about a big, burly, hairy male dressing up in women’s clothes. My first encounter with a drag queen.

Maybe, if I had paid attention to the real story and realized fairy tales were about fairies I would have been prepared when my husband came out of the closet. At the very least, maybe I would have felt as though I were in good company. Either way, I know I won’t be dressing up in my gown and tiara anytime soon – my ex got those in the divorce.

I dream of kayaking. To actually do it would be a laughing matter, I fear. Pale, uncoordinated girl in a boat just doesn’t fit the image I have in my head. The sound of a river does magical things to my soul and seeing the world from the middle of the water is a sight to recall for years to come. This is not, however the sort of river I have been chasing. The ‘river’ is the last card played in a Texas Hold’Em Poker game. Poker has become my latest addiction, although that may be an understatement, I’ll have to check with my therapist. I do not play with money, do not gasp and forward my mail to hell just yet. There are free tournaments throughout the area at local restaurants every night of the week (and three times on Sunday!) This addiction began about a month ago, when I was desperately missing my son and found that I could not only engage my mind, but do so in a room full of MEN! What better way to spend my evenings! (Turns out, men who are playing poker are really not at all interested in chit chat, and I became far to serious about getting good at the game to notice the attractive potentials at my table). The first night I played, I came in 18th out 71 players and was so incredible proud of myself. The second night, I won the tournament, taking home a cash prize of $100, thus catapulting the addiction to therapeutic levels. What I have learned about myself through this experience is that I have no patience. Those who know me are already laughing, wondering how it took me this long to figure this out. It’s not that I didn’t realize it before, I just didn’t realize the extent. For those unfamiliar with Texas Hold’Em (I shudder at the thought) it goes something like this: Each player is dealt 2 cards, face down. After a round of betting, the dealer lays down three “community” cards in the middle called “the flop”. After another round of betting, the dealer lays down a fourth card, called “the turn”, and then after more better, the dealer lays down the last and final card, called “the river”. Each player is to make the best 5-card hand with the 7 possible cards available. I can never wait for the River Card. I cannot play for a straight draw, or a flush potential if I have to wait on the river to get it. People win BIG on the River. Not me, I have long since folded. I have no patience. I cannot possibly depend on that ONE final card, with all the odds against me to make my hand THIS is perhaps why I suck at this poker game. That and I’m too conservative. I only want to play when I have cards to play and good players don’t need the cards, they can simply play the players. This, as it turns out is a direct reflection on my life. I can’t possible create one more lame metaphor to spell it out, but it’s true. I have no patience for what MIGHT come my way. I have this need to cling tightly to what exists only right in front of me and to disbelieve anything that has the odds for coming down the road. It’s the fear that what I need most will never come. That the one thing I am banking on (literally in poker) won’t actually materialize. What I am learning is that I need to take more chances. I need to risk more to win more. I need to put myself out there and hold my breath just a little longer. Good things might happen. They might not, too, but I have nothing to lose by trying! Tonight, I am off to play in my Tuesday night game. I am going to try to risk more, take chances more often, play more than just my cards and to hold my breath for the river. Even if I am out in 10 minutes, I will know that I at the very least, I sat down at the table and played. If this doesn’t work out, there’s always the kayaking thing. Let’s hope this works out. 😉

She was 34 years old, 134 pounds, a mother of three and the wife of an assistant vice principal. She had short, thin wavy hair and a smile that could light up a room. She could knit Barbie clothes, make doll hats out of Styrofoam cups and heal a wounded heart with a hug. Her name was Jenny, but I called her “Mom”. At 34, she found herself on the cold, cement floor of our basement, with no knowledge of why she had fallen or how long she had been unconscious. The CAT scan gave the ultimate in reasons: a brain tumor. She fought hard, unwavering, valiantly, for 13 years. Years filled with triumphs, victories it would seem, times of high hopes when the word “remission” infused our vocabularies. But always, great sorrows followed. Grand mal seizures were always the best indicator that things were not going well again. At the end of it all, she had the life maximum of chemo and radiation that any person can survive. She had lived through two brain surgeries and outlived all the other patients in the experimental program by years. She was, according to her doctor, a miracle. She lived to see me get married. My wedding day was the last time I saw my mother alert, mobile and truly happy. Within a month she was bed ridden; within three she was gone.

I was in 6th grade at the time of that first fall and was pulled out of class to be told that a neighbor would be driving my sister and me home from school. The neighbor was the one to tell me my mom was in the hospital and in that second my entire life changed. Everything changed. I learned in that exact second what it meant to only have today and this moment. While I was blessed with 13 more years with my mom, there was never a single day that we took for granted after that. Each and every turn was a mystery and surviving was a gift. I thank God for those 13 years. I thank God for all the opportunities I was able to take again and again to show my mother how much I loved her, to learn from her, to listen to her. I have been told I see the world as black and white. More than once in my life I have broken off a friendship with someone who seemed to live as if time is of no consequence. People who lived as if perhaps tomorrow, or tomorrow’s tomorrow, they might stop and give pause to things that bring meaning to life, but not today. Today is all that we are promised. Today is all that I know I have. I will live all my today’s as if I may never have a tomorrow. I turned 34 today. 4 days before the 12th anniversary of her passing. I cannot imagine facing today what my mother faced at this young age. I could only hope to embrace it with the faith, courage and strength that she demonstrated to everyone that knew her. In the legacy of things my mother left with me I unwaveringly defend my need to see the world as finite. I will show people how much I care at every single turn. I will leave this earth with nothing left unsaid, with no questions weighing in on the hearts and minds of those I love. I will spend my days and my time on the things that are most important to me. I will not let my heart be drug down by those who do not feel passionately about living. Through her example, I will always know that life is not to be taken for granted.

Each night, when I crawl into bed, my dog goes to the dining room and eats. He snarfs his entire bowl of food, drinks a gallon of water and then comes to bed. He won’t eat when I’m not home and only indulges when he is certain I will be home for awhile. My vet says it’s common in pets. It’s an abandonment issue. They want to make sure you are there and not going anywhere before they feel safe enough to go about the regular things in life like eating. My dog and I have a lot in common. I will not eat wings on a first date. He might take me to the coolest sports bar for the game of the year and we might have incredible conversation but I will not eat wings. They are too messy. I’d have to eat with my hands and lick the sauce off my fingers. I’d try too hard to balance eating the wings without sticking the whole thing in my mouth to get every morsel. It’s too intimate. It’s too delicate. It leaves me feeling too vulnerable. He might think I’m too girlie if I eat them too neatly. He might think I’m gross if I eat them like the boys. I love to eat with my hands. I love meals where the table is full of people and full of dishes and everyone reaches and passes and indulges until they ache. Fajitas is one of my favorite family meals. I love everyone sitting around together, casually creating their own perfect bite, reaching across, over, dipping, spreading, saucing… and then eating with their hands. I tend to talk with my hands and on fajita night, that means with food in tow. I’m not the right ethnicity to fold a fajita correctly so once I pick it up, there is NO setting it down. That means I will gesticulate with grilled chicken and salsa along for the ride. Fajita night is not for date night. If a date is successful enough to be invited over for dinner it will not be fajitas. It’s familiar, and it takes me a long while to feel comfortable enough to eat with such casualness in front of someone I’m trying to impress. Dripping sour cream and salsa from a tight grip on a tortilla is not attractive early on in a relationship. It is safe to say that I will sleep with someone before I will eat messy food with them. It just feels like a similar vulnerability. I suppose it is safe to say that if someone makes it to the point where I share hot wings during the game, or cook them up fajitas and margaritas that they should sincerely feel privileged and know that our relationship has reached the next level. It took my dog 2 years to be able to eat when I wasn’t home. I hope it doesn’t take that long to reach a similar point in my relationships. I look forward to the day when the table is again full of people, full of food and when I sit with rice on my cheek and salsa dripping from my hand, I hope he looks across the table and winks a knowing wink at me knowing how special I think he is.

When I was about 11 years old my sister and I stayed at my grandparent’s house for two weeks without our parents. They lived five hours from our home and there was little option to leave if I got homesick. I can remember my mom asking if we were sure we wanted to stay right before she left and we both nodded confidently, but my determination at independence sunk the moment she drove off down the lane. In the age before cell phones, I was stuck with my decision. I was under the impression at that time in my life that while we were out of the house, my parents were having the time of their lives and now I was going to miss out on it.

Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, I became the grown-up, with a son of my own facing two weeks at his grandparents’ in Tennessee. On Sunday morning, at 6am, I finished loading the car and went down to wake him just enough to say goodbye before I headed home with an empty backseat and he stayed on with his cousin for two weeks of glorious fun at the pool, being out on the lake, driving the boat and all the summer activities available to a nine year old boy. After a brief hug I walked to the door and glanced back at my overly-independent, mature-beyond-his-years boy that I wouldn’t see for the next several weeks. I wasn’t there but for a second when he sat bolt upright in bed and came running at me crying. He jumped up into my arms clinging to my neck and sobbing, “Please don’t go!”

I left about a half hour later when he was past his sadness and had moved on to see with the telescope what orange thing was floating on the lake. He has talked to me since without an ounce of sadness or homesickness in his voice. It was on the way home, as I sobbed with the pain of leaving him, as I fought the need to give him this great summer with family over my own selfishness to never let him out of my sight, that I realized how painful it is to be the parent. I find no joy in being home without him. I have not hosted lavish parties or stayed out to the wee hours. I have come home to a house too quiet for my own good and peeked into his bedroom to savor for a moment the feel of his space. I have checked my email more times than sanity would permit for word from him about his activities. My “big summer plans” are to see if I can revitalize his fish-killing aquarium and steadily add more fish until it’s full when he gets home. I want to call him a million times a day but know that I need to let him call when he wants to talk to me. I had no idea throughout my years as a parent how difficult some of these moments would be. I was prepared for some of them and blindsided by several others. My friends all think I have the life this summer. My sister, with two kids of her own, just can’t imagine why I’m not enjoying every moment of my time without him.

As a divorced parent who shares custody, I have had my share of time without him before, but never this long, never this far from home. I will make it through this summer and he and I both will be better for it. I will cherish that moment with him wrapped in my arms, asking me to stay not because he was afraid to be without me, not because he dreaded the weeks ahead, but simply because he wanted me there with him to share in it all. What I hope more than anything is this fall, when we are back in the daily grind of trumpet practice, homework, flash cards and cleaning his room, that I will remember this time. I want to remember how empty life without him feels. I want to recall with vividness the pain of driving my car away from him Sunday morning. I am proud of my own courage to let go a little this summer and let him explore his own world. I hope that in 9 years when he is ready to leave home I have the same strength to let him go. And I hope, for just a minute, he hugs me just as tightly then, before he goes for I know in my heart I will be whispering, “please don’t go.”

So, you’ve come to the beginning of my blog. It doesn’t feel like much of a beginning, does it? There’s no introduction, there’s no foundation, it just jumps right in and starts spewing information. Well, that’s pretty much me.

But I thought, in retrospect, that a small introduction might be polite. If you decided for whatever reason to come all the way back to the start, you certainly came here expecting something and I’d like to at least give you a token gift in return.

So here it is, my new beginning. Written two and a half years after this blog started but hey, who’s to know that (except that I just told you).

The truth is, this isn’t really the beginning. My blog didn’t start here and it didn’t start with this post. It started elsewhere but I eventually uprooted it and moved it to its new home and during the move I tossed some posts that just didn’t seem important or relative anymore. To some that goes against all the rules of blogging, but in my blogland, there are no rules so it doesn’t bother me that some of my writing is now long gone. It wasn’t that good to begin with.

That’s another thing you should know. I don’t write because I believe I’m at all good at it. Truth is, 99% of all of this is just plain drivel, but I write because I find it to be cathartic. And, if I’m still being honest, I love getting emails from complete strangers saying they laughed or cried or thought deeply about one of my posts, even if they laughed when I had intended them to cry, or they thought deeply about something I meant to be simply funny. It’s still email.

But if you came here and you read but you never commented, that’s okay, too. Because if you haven’t noticed, this blog isn’t about you (well, okay, some of you it IS about, but that’s cause you dared to be my friend or you’re stuck with me through blood). Comment if you like, stay silent if you prefer. In any case I hope you enjoy reading at least something along the way.

Just remember, to me, it’s not about the end result. It’s not about producing some significant work of writing. It’s always about the journey. And this blog is all about my journey. My journey didn’t start here, you just jump in to my life in my mid-thirties after so much has already happened and so much has yet to occur. Along the way you’ll get some of the history. I try to let you in on the necessary details along the pathway.

But, let’s get on with it, shall we? The beginning isn’t anything significant, it was just a place to start. And this here is where this part of my journey began. Enjoy!