Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love

We were driving on our annual trip South. Grooving to iTunes Tango, boys watching the 2nd of many movies on the minivan DVD player. My Ladybug sitting in the passenger seat talking and talking and talking. She is telling me about what happened yesterday, what she feels about whichever topic floats into her brain. These are special moments that we share. I treasure them just as much as I treasure the times I sit in the passenger's seat and tell my mother what happened yesterday or how I feel about whatever thought floats through my brain. Even as a 40-year old, those are special moments. (However, instead of listening to Tango, it would be Broadway Show Tunes for that is part of my mother’s soul.)

I let Ladybug talk as my mother let me. I know Ladybug wants to share her soul with me and by listening, I learn even more about her. She is in (from what I remember) an awkward transition time – no longer a kid but not quite a woman yet. She wants to be both but is not entirely comfortable with either role. However this ‘phase’ (which clinicians and doctors and esteemed academicians refer to as puberty, but I, the Minivan Philosopher, refer to as “OMG, OMG, my va-jay-jay kweefed!”) is temporary. Soon, in what feels like a blink of an eye to me, she will shed the trappings of childhood and fill out her womanly curves. It will feel more natural to her.

Have I adequately prepared her for womanhood? Have my theories and philosophies about raising her proven to be true? Will she thank me when she’s older or spend her life savings on therapy complaining about me?

From what I can tell so far (and we’ve not even made it out of Missouri yet on our trip), I think I’m on the right track. She’s a pretty amazing stuck-in-the-middle-of-all-this-physical-and-emotional-change person. I feel in my heart she’s going to be phenomenal!

Structure

When I started writing The Minivan Philosopher, I waffled back and forth. Is it a journal? Is it a diary? Does it have to be chronological? When I realized that for it to be any of those things, I would be assuming that I know where I'm going or where my minivan is taking me. And I really don't know. I'm clueless as to where I'll end up. I have never been good at developing a five-year plan and sticking to it. The only life timetables I ever followed appropriately were completing my BA and MS degrees and when I was pregnant. However even in those instances, I was able to customize my experiences. The only thing that I do know is I will continue to get older and that I have to pay my taxes every year.

So, no, dear readers, this will not be like a diary or a timeline. Instead it will be an accurate (well as accurate as I want it to be - because, you know, some customization will occur here too) representation of the thoughts in my mind and situations that accompany them. It may not be rational, but who said the minivan philosopher has to be rational?

New Status Update

We live in a fast world. This is not new information. We zip, zap, text, tweet. We don't stop long enough to breathe. Why? Do we even know what we are missing? Do we behave this way because of environmental conditioning? Or, are we afraid of what we might see, or, better yet, feel if we slowed it all down?

The other day after working in my yard, pulling weeds from my modest flower bed, I was sitting on my front porch drinking my ice, cold --yet all the ice had melted -- water when, I saw a small insect hovering over my bright, yellow, potted marigold. Initially, I thought it was a mosquito and went to swat it away. But I looked at it more carefully and saw that it was a very tiny bee. Perhaps it was a baby bee as I've never seen one that small before. I watched it suck the nectar from the flower. I thought about the lifecycle and activities of bees. I marveled at how the bee's wings were moving so fast, they seemed perfectly still (which then reminded me of the pianist who moved his fingers so fast they too seemed to be perfectly still). I watched the baby bee drink and drink. I could have remained there entranced by its activity, but my phone buzzed and I stood up to read the text message. When I did, the baby bee zoomed away so fast, I couldn't tell where it went. It was just gone.

How did getting things done replace connecting with people and the world around us? Many times I'll be heading out the door, hurrying to get someplace important, and I'll see my neighbor out and even though there's a million things I'd like to tell her about, I usually only have "time" for a quick wave, a smile and a hello. And she returns the greetings. It's like we are both on automatic pilot. She probably feels just as busy and rushed as I do.

Why do we live in this bullet-point world? Why do we narrow our lives down to 'five key messages' or the '30-second elevator speech'? We send countless status updates via Facebook or Twitter. We text seemingly meaningless and erroneous information to those who want to know 'wassup'. But what do these 'facts' actually reveal about our lives?

• "I'm excited to go on vacation."
• "I ate at the best Italian restaurant last night."
• "I ran 3 miles in the rain, am I crazy?" "
• "I walked my yappy dog."
• "I saw a movie. I danced tango. I'm going to bed."

These bullet points reveal my actions but not my soul. The actions allow my friends/followers to develop an image of me. And likewise, I can draw conclusions about them and their lives which keeps me from having to actually ask "How are you?" because I'm so busy, you see.

But I'm a writer and a philosopher and although I don't intrinsically like operating in this bullet point world, I play along. I do it too. I know I should stop and ask more questions. I know I should interact more on a human, face-to-face, landline to landline or voice-to-voice and not a keyboard-to-keyboard level with the people in my life. I know I shouldn't rely on those status updates and tweets to tell me how my dear college friend really feels about not having children or being a stay-at-home mom, or getting married or divorced or anything. But I do. It's funny even though, I've never experienced that wonderfully happy, satisfied feeling after spending a few hours with my laptop reading status updates, I still read them instead of calling. Nor have I ever received a text from someone that said "Last night's tweet was great. Let's do it again real soon." I know I need to do better.

I think I'll update my status to say so...

And a one and a two and a three, turn!

Listening to Dreamgirls loudly throughout my house – I Am Changing – seems appropriate for me right now – yes I’m changing…taking back my life, my soul, my heart – this song is from my past, my youth so the images that flood my mind and heart are of dancing, pulsing to the music and working hard to get the body to do the choreography, some of it easier to accomplish than others – much like life – some stuff you have to work extra hard at, pushing and pulling, molding, shaping, stuffing, fighting to put it the way it should be and then whatever was resisting finally gives and it sorts itself out. Other times life comes together so easily it’s like you’ve never had to spend hours working on a particularly hard dance step. But in each instance, the dance at the end is still beautiful.

Having a hard time with titles tonight...

Was musing the other day about the difference between a blog and a journal.  I think a journal is a more intimate journey for the writer and the reader.  Blogs can be great information sources, can be entertaining, can be good escapes but blogs are not journals.  I haven’t come across a blog yet where after reading an entry or two or three where I say – I know him or I know her, what makes them tick.  Every blog I’ve read so far keeps things on a superficial level.  Who are these people really?  What gets their passions up?  What saddens them, what brings joy?  Why do they all try to be so clever?  It’s like we’re hiding behind cleverness instead of truth.  We build up layers and layers of skin,  masks to who we really are.  Are we afraid of revealing ourselves to the world or more importantly are we afraid of revealing ourselves to ourselves?  Are we afraid of our own rejection?  Can we reject ourselves?  Have we already?  Is that why we walk on by when we see pain, why we turn our heads away from the homeless man on the street but cause traffic slow-downs (if not crawls) when passing the scene of an accident?  Isn’t there pain in both situations?  Why do we choose to look at one and not the other?  Is it because in our insulated cars, we ‘feel’ as if we’re watching a movie or television show – but the homeless man sitting on the sidewalk asking for help looks you in the eye and there is no ‘monitor’ or glass between us – just humanity.  And why do we walk away from our humanity? Why do we cover our own needs up with cleverness, humor, makeup, anger, bitterness?  What is so scary about being at one with yourself?  When we open our hearts, lay them bare for the world to see, for our own eyes to see, we often see a child.  Our inner child, the pure one, the innocent one, the one who hasn’t learned to hate yet and we often see that child sad that he/she has been put away and ignored for so long.  When I opened my own heart to myself, re-examined things in my past, acknowledged decisions, and forgave myself, my ‘inner child’ cried with joy because she hadn’t been free in decades.  She had been pushed down, I often thought I had to be something, someone other than me.  I wished so hard sometimes to be just like someone else I admired – that I lost myself.  I wanted all the qualities I admired in others to manifest in me.  But I thought mistakenly that I had to relinquish my own essence to grasp those qualities.  Instead of just reaching down into my soul and releasing those qualities.  Because they were always there, just buried under a concrete wall and levee that even Hurricane Katrina wouldn’t have been able to penetrate or breech.  But who or what finally broke through my walls?  You would think that it would have been someone else but no, the architect of my walls was myself and I was the destroyer of those walls as well.  My soul, my inner child kept chipping at the stone for years, kept working its way toward my heart until I could no longer suppress my self’s desire to be free and to be loved for who I am.  And not loved by someone else but loved by me.  I had rejected my very being for the better part of my life and it was time to celebrate my self.  I can’t say that it was an easy process or that I’m done and all fixed now so that I’m overwhelmingly fabulous.  The process is/was/always going to be hard and that fabulous though I am, I can be ever so much more fabulous to myself.  I do welcome each day I’m blessed with with much more excitement than in years past. Each time I figure out something new about myself I get excited at the resulting clarity in thought.  I have had so many “ah ha” moments and with each subsequent layer or concrete block being removed, I experience not a feeling of vulnerability at the loss of my protective shield but a feeling of strength and dominance, my shield is my truth and acceptance of myself.  No one can change that.  Only me, and I don’t want to build concrete walls, levees or nuclear bomb shelters around my heart and soul.  My world has been so much richer these past few years I don’t want to go back to the way it was.  I like it as it is now.  I like me as I am now.