LaurieWrites

Moira

I was lucky to have the new experience recently of taking pictures of a brand-new baby.

I'm very excited about babies lately. Two great friends of mine -- who are not yet ready to share their little girl photographically with the world at large - welcomed a daughter this month. And also! My sister is pregnant. 

I'm so excited. 

I'M SO EXCITED. I am going to be an aunt. I may be a better aunt than I would have been a mom, I'm thinking, although I still have my emotional issues about not being a mom, but that's just how it shook out. Life. It happens. It gives what it gives, takes what it takes. I'm 41 and almost 42. What are the chances, right? So, we march on. This isn't about me anyway. This is about the best baby who will ever be, so let's move on. 

I haven't specifically discussed my sister here that much, but she is my only sibling, crucial to my daily life, my conscience, my gift, my favorite person. She knows my gold and my trash. She has forgiven me unforgivable things. She is resilient and funny and fun and intelligent and driven. I'd step in front of a train for her. 

She has, also, scrapped and worked for everything she has ever had. I know this. She is the most impressive person I know. 

I love my brother-in-law, too. He is a person I respect above most other human beings I've met in my life, mostly because I know he'd step in front of that train, too. I am so grateful for him. So, overall I'm just really lucky to have them, as individuals and as a family unit, in my life, and they are going to have a stellar child. 

I like them. 

Prior to taking endless photos of my sister's baby, my sister's sister-in-law trusted me to take the first formal portraits of her new little girl. I was very excited, but also very nervous. I had never done an infant photo shoot before, and I really believe that these first portraits are important. This compounds my belief that asking anyone to take pictures of you and/or your family on milestone occasions is an investment, as well as a statement of trust, and I so much wanted to capture what this family wanted. 

I think we ended up doing okay, mostly because this infant girl, like most babies, is just precious. I will be ever grateful to her mom and dad for allowing me to take her first portraits. 

Baby in a pumpkin hat!

Pea pod baby! 

(This is my favorite, because she's winking at me, kinda.) 

Eating my hand, hanging out, whatever.

Baby's foot and Mommy's finger. 

Miss Thing just hanging in her seat in her ballet slipper onesie. 

Mama so LOVES me.

I feel really lucky to have gotten to share these images of this brand new person with the world. Until I have a proper online portfolio, of which she is most deserving, this will have to do. Welcome, Moira. You are a gem. 

Mighty Things Again

This was Palm Springs. 

And this. 

This. 

This too. 

Finally, this.

It happened at exactly the right time for me, this year. It seemed to work that way for a lot of people I talked to, people who are at so many cool and interesting, sometimes terrifying, points in their lives. They want to do things. They want to help people. They want to have things and learn things, be things and change things, break them down, build them up, you know how all of that stuff goes. 

It is like no event I've ever attended, and I'm not sure I can explain any of it to you effectively, except to say that something good is afoot almost every single second. 

This year, I worked with the fundraising team for charity:water, mostly because I will follow Laura Mayes anywhere to work on whatever powerful and interesting thing she's got going on, and this year it led me to Camp Mighty for the second time, with a bit of an expanded role. I liked this a lot. A great team is at work on this event, and I'm learning that it elevates my brain, my interests, and my access to my own goals and hopes when I'm a part of something with other people who don't settle for less than great. 

Laura already knows how I feel, because I babbled it out on the last night, but I'll say it again in this week of Thanksgiving, because sometimes you just need to acknowledge that your life is better because a certain person or the other brought you into a scene that made things better, for reasons known only to them. So thanks, Laura Mayes. May you have all of the pie and pecans and adventures with your amazing son that you need to fill you up forever. I appreciate you. You are, truly, the human illustration of rad. 

I did sit in with a team this year, although I flitted around to the other four to make sure they had their...whatever they needed. Group Three listened to me rattle off a list of five goals I had to pick from my ruthlessly edited and updated life list to really focus on this year. 

Look, if you know me at all, or if you have read any of my awkwardly punctuated, rambling sentences on this blog, you know for real that picking five out of one hundred anything is a joke in this joint, right? But what you may not know is that I am oddly, latently superstitious, which may be a result of crossing myself thousands of times as a Catholic person until young adulthood, or an anxious personality type, or whatever, I don't know. But stuff MEANS stuff around here, y'all. I cannot divest it of its meaning. I have TRIED, trust me. I would trade places with you people who can bark out your five and be on to the Moroccan patio for a Road Runner (have one, if you ever go to the Ace Hotel, do it. Eat that blackberry right up. Do it for me.) But I am not one of you. I need you to drive me around, or be my girlfriend, or my nanny, or my accountant. But I am that other trainwreck, over there.

So. Up until the time I had to read, I was scratching stuff out and circling it in my omnipresent green felt tip pen, underlining it, praying over it, because these were to be my FIVE ALL YEAR, until boom, my turn, so I had to say some stuff. 

I'm still not entirely sure what I gave up for the ones I picked, and I'm trying not to think about it, because the final five are all good and worthy and supportive of my personal growth, professional viability, and participation in my community of people I care about and who care about me, which is really the most important thing of all.

All I know is I AM going to Ireland in 2013, and drinking a Guinness, although it is not listed here. It didn't make it into my stated five, but that's only because I'm so sure this is going to happen that I wasn't wasting a slot. I am ultimately quite crafty. 

Here are my five, I think. 

• Have a clean, organized living and working space that supports peace and productivity, i.e., streamline my life. Throw away all belongings that no longer serve me. Start fresh. Grow up about this. 
• Photograph a gay wedding in Maryland. 
• Publish an essay in Washingtonian or the Washington Post, or a national magazine. Maybe both. What the hell. 
• Practice fun, meaningful, intentional gratitude, and make it a habit. Do 100 cool things for my family and friends (especially those who have helped me so much through this last insane year. (Details TBD. I doubt I'll be able to hit 100, but at least get a good start.) )
• Meet or exceed my past highest salary with freelance work (writing, editing, photography, social media not-mavening.) Or, at least don't cry inside when I write my rent check. 

My bonus list, because I couldn't stop: 

• Finish and launch LaurieMedia as a professional, multi-purpose website.
• Make a new recipe every week for a year. 
• My favorite addition: get a picture taken with Bret Michaels, both of us making devil horns, because that is what he does in every single picture taken of him. I'm hoping this will occur at a PetSmart, because he is quite involved in his own line of pet toys, because of course he is. It's just too bad that Rock of Love Bus is no longer a thing, because I'd love that in the background. (What? I'm a multi-faceted human being. Who has seen Poison live many, many times. If you did not know this, you are not paying attention. Or maybe you just didn't know this. It's okay.)  

If this year is like last year (and honestly, I'm hoping it's not, because I need it to be less chaotic and supportive of my mental health in just about every way) I'll do things on my list I wasn't planning and will space on the things I really wanted, because I was all YAY DRIVE CROSS COUNTRY WHOOO, so that's off my list, but wow. Intense. I think I need at least a month and several more thousands of dollars, next time. However, BYGONES. 

I feel good about all of it, though. I feel good in general about things right now denial except cutting the Ace Hotel pool wristband off of my wrist a few thousand miles east of Palm Springs, because as fun as it was to still have it on, it was a little sharp around the edges. 

I can almost wait for next year, but not quite. I also have a lot of work to do. 

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Life List 2012

So here I am, the night before life list day at Camp Mighty, finishing my list, as I did last year. 

I am so, so late to the life list party, later than I was last year. It's shameful. Part of the issue is that it appears that I went into some kind of strange, challenged place for most of 2011 and, well hell, most of 2012 too. When I looked back at last year's list, I was all, "Who wanted to do that?" and "Who wanted to go there? NOT ME." It didn't resonate. It just felt weird. So I knew I had to rewrite it. But you know what that means. 

I had to rewrite it. 

It didn't come easy. 

This is what I came up with for this year. I'm finishing it just as I get in from the Camp Mighty space party. Although I may have mentioned a time or two around here that I fail costumes, I gave this one a teeny bit of thought, and a try. 

Space cowgirl. Yeehaw. 

So here's the list. There are a few blanks at the end, because you never know when you'll change your mind or come up with new stuff. 

1.     Learn American Sign Language

2.     Write and publish a book

3.     Understand wine, become a certified sommelier

4.     Drink a Guinness in Ireland

5.     Become a Red Cross disaster volunteer

6.     Visit all 50 states

7.     Photograph a gay wedding in Maryland

8.     Become a master photographer

9.     Take my mom on a fabulous trip, anywhere of her choosing, on me.

10. Live in a European country for a year.

11. Exceed my past highest salary, this time as a writer, editor, and photographer. 

12. See Bruce Springsteen live in New Jersey.

13. Have competent basic chef skills, and own a professional set of kitchen knives.

14. Pay off all student loan debt by the time I’m 50.

15. Digitize and archive all family photographs. Put the prints in books.

16. Publish an article in a national magazine – print or online.

17. Visit every country in Europe.

18. Throw a crab feast for my half-birthday.

19. Take trips on all Amtrak routes in the U.S.

20. Learn to play the drums.

21. Outfit my kitchen to indicate that I’m not in college anymore.

22. Live debt free.

23. Do a full photo/travel/food tour of New Mexico with someone I love.

24. Return to Vietnam, spend time volunteering.

25. Photograph an Operation Smile mission.

26. Attend NYC Pride and Mermaid Parade 2013 in a recovered Coney Island.

27. Establish a nonprofit association in honor of my great-grandparents.

28. Drink coffee and wine in Paris on the same day.

29. Have a yard that contains both a lilac and a hydrangea bush.

30. Understand how to competently use Speedlite flash and studio lighting.

31. Go to a Stanley Cup championship game.

32. Go to Oktoberfest in Munich.

33. Support surgeries for at least five children per year through Smile Train/Operation Smile.

34. Own a home.

35. Do the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg/Vienna.

36. Eat sushi in Japan.

37. Visit all tourist spots in D.C. that I should have seen a long time ago, if I didn’t live here. 1.White House. 2. All the Smithsonians and monuments. 3. National Archives, etc.)

38. Celebrate my December/Christmas birthday on a warm island, with friends.

39. Live in New York and know it well.

40. Have a professional website that I love and that represents my skills and portfolio well.

41. Have a clean, organized living space that supports peace and productivity.

42. Have a place at the beach that I can go to anytime.

43. Visit Australia. Have Eden Riley show me around.

44. Have Boston Terriers in my house again, and support rescue efforts.

45. Go on a food and wine tour of Tuscany.

46. Send my parents on a honeymoon.

47. Meet Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

48. Learn to change my oil and perform other basic maintenance on my car.

49. Be published on McSweeney’s.

50. Meet Bret Michaels. Get picture taken with him making the metal horns, as he does in almost every photo ever published of him.

51. Do 100 cool things for my family and friends. 

52. Cross the border to Canada. Visit Dolores in Montreal.

53. See a Duran Duran show in London.

54. Learn to ride a motorcycle at the Harley Davidson Rider’s Edge class.

55. Trace my family history accurately and completely.

56. Be competently conversational in Spanish and French, maybe through immersion programs.

57. Print all meaningful/beautiful photographs, and hang them in my home.

58. Match my old 401K within three years.

59. Write and publish an “Ask Auntie Laurie” advice column on the internet.

60. Have fun and meaningful traditions with my new niece or nephew.

61. Go on the tour of Eataly NYC and take a class. Go to Eataly in Rome.

62. Photograph a birth.

63. Own and use a full set of pro-level Canon lenses.

64. Publish an essay in Washingtonian or the Washington Post.

65. Photograph 50 people who make the world a better place. Profile them and publish on the blog.

66. Go to Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, SXSW Music, Coachella, Virgin Festival in London. 

67. Endow a scholarship.

68. Spend time in San Francisco and get to know the city. 

69. Streamline my life. Throw away all belongings that no longer serve me. Start fresh. 

70. Visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder spots in Missouri and South Dakota.

71. Send one surprise present per month for no reason.

72.  Learn how to DJ (I already know how to rap.)

73. Get my 200-hour yoga certification.

74. Host a fun beach weekend with some of my favorite people.

75. Drive cross-country with no time constraints. Stop wherever I want to take pictures. Don’t skip Marfa, Texas, this time. 

76. Host a holiday.

77. See all the oceans. Float in the Dead Sea.

78. Design a website.

79. Work for at least one whole season from a deck by the water.

80. Have a king-sized bed with really great sheets, an actual duvet, and pillows that don’t drive me crazy.

81. Write something that I don’t think I’m capable of writing at all.

82. Win a poker game. Wear sunglasses while doing so. 

83.  Live in a real neighborhood where I actually interact with my neighbors. 

84. Manage social media for a touring band. 

85. Go on a heavy metal cruise. 

86. Have a decent bra fitting. 

87. Go to Hawaii with Sarah to celebrate our birthdays. 

88. Get overall financial house in order so it is not a constant source of anxiety. 

89. Have a regular practice of having people over to my house for meals and conversation.

90. Write my travel stories down. 

91. Create an annual tradition with my cousins. 

92. Drive cross-country (Check, September, 2012.) 

93. Organize and edit all of my best pictures into an online portfolio. Make prints and hang the ones I really love. 

94. Know how to cook all basic meals/foods without a recipe. 1. Soup 2. Roast 3. Cake ?

95. Have an Etsy store or other online shop that actually sells things. 

96. Travel somewhere fun with just my sister. 

97. 

98. 

99. 

100. 

I have to pick five goals now that I want to focus on in the coming year. I'm going to sleep on that. 

Aiming Low NonCon: All Good

I had a long rambly post drafted about the Aiming Low NonCon and this...this...BLOGGING PLATFORM ate it. 

Seems appropriate. Aiming low and all. 

So, herewith, and long story short:

I had been committed to go for months, since Anissa asked me to be a photowalk leader. Some of my favorite people in my no-longer-able-to-distinguish-real-from-blogging life would be there. It was going to be warmer there than here. It was not my living room. It was supposed to be laid back. All good things. 

Then my life fell apart in a few distinct unbloggable ways, on top of the ways that it has steadily careened down into the valley of not-awesome since July. (I just don't even want to talk about it. I can barely stand to sketch my feelings about it in colored pencils, which is in no way as satisfying as I thought it would be. FEELINGS. COLORED PENCIL FEELINGSSSSSS.)

Just a few days before the trip, even, I wasn't sure I could swing it. My head would explode, or I'd embarrass myself more than usual and upset all the nice people. I would drive Vikki (who was going to be my roommate) crazy. I'd drive Sarah, who was going to travel there with me, crazy. This is a concern I've never had in our years of friendship, so I'm not sure why it was so important now. I told you things were weird lately. 

This was a lot of sturm und get the hell over myself, basically. 

So I put myself into Sarah's vehicle and bought some extra Vitamin Water (because you should totally invite me to your next rocking party, dear God, what have I become?) and said okay, let's do this. 

What actually happened: 

It turned out fine.

I'm not saying I didn't drive Vikki crazy, or leave her outside our door to languish in the path of barn owls very early on Sunday morning due to being very involved with my three hours of sleep.

Absolutely ridiculous. I should also note that these bandanas were provided to us, so we could make our bank robber and Bret Michaels dreams come true, respectively. It's not like we brought them along on purpose, although next year we probably should. (I also have mine hanging over my desk, for luck, and to make me smile. I'll take what I can get these days.) (I will never claim that cowgirl hat in the background, however. There are limits.)

I'm not saying I was Sarah's dream co-pilot. I'm not saying there weren't a few times where I had to go outside and walk around the building to center myself because this social thing, sometimes it's harder for me than it looks these days. 

But what it was was the best possible place for me to be that was not my living room last weekend.

It was so much better than my living room. There was candy and wine, and sessions where I did occasionally feel like I had something to contribute. There was a sense of being among people who also create and share stories online for various purposes, and a comfort I'd kind of forgotten in that that has always been really important to me, so it was nice to have that back for a time. 

 

Even Neil had fun.

There were also -- and this is really the kicker -- some of the funniest, brightest, most twisted, wonderful, talented, creative, and KIND people I know. I've come back again to the reality that they do not live near me, and this is upsetting, but it helps some toknow that they are out there, even if I mostly have to connect with them through this computer most of the time. 

There was the opporunity to follow Robin around, and to share time with Faiqa that I've found is really good for me. I got to listen to Katherine talk, which is a happy place for me. Even if I did drive Vikki crazy, I can laugh with her for real about everything and nothing, so watching her commune with the fake woodland creatures in glass cases like a really twisted Snow White with an iPhone? That was a cheap thrill. And honestly, if she's doing that for two days with remarkable commitment? I don't know why I'm worried about her sanity. She's got her bases loaded.

See? (Oh, and Janet! I got to see Janet after way too long.) 

I got to know Alexandra better, which was SO good. Her words to me on Saturday shook something loose in my brain, and I went on to have actual fun that night and if there's a thing I haven't been so much about lately, it's fun, so she's magic. (Also, I knew she wrote funny, but I didn't know she was quite...so funny. Oh God is she funny. I love funny people the most.)

I got the time with Sarah that is important to me to have every once in a while, outside of the norms of our daily lives. Since we met each other four years ago this month at a smallish blogging conference in our city, she's tolerated me better and more willingly than anyone except for two people I'm related to by blood. And sometimes I even listen to her and try to help, too, I swear. The scales will hopefully balance out over our lifetimes. 

My photowalk was fun, and everyone who came along was a good sport and got to know each other a little and enjoyed the beautiful space in Callaway Gardens.

By the way? This place is enormous. When I read "Callaway Gardens" I got a very different image of what it would be, certainly not a couple of miles long and wide, with tons of different facilities that it would probably take three or four days to see appropriately. You Atlanta people are lucky to have it so close. 

Anissa was responsible for all of this, of course. We became friends after the stroke she had a few years ago, communicating with each other one time on Twitter just a few days before this jerk of a thing happened to her, so her joke has always been "YOU DID THIS TO ME," except she's probably serious, and that's fine, because I'm a good scapegoat. I'm glad she tempts fate to talk to me anyway. We got some time together in Nashville this winter, when she encouraged me as I set about the business of ripping up the roots of some fundamental things in my life in the search for a new way to be. I take her support really seriously and I appreciate it. What she made happen in NonCon was obviously so needed for the people who showed up, and I'm glad I didn't let my current [unbloggable redacted please make it stop] stop me from being a part of it. 

The best thing was that everywhere I looked at this event, people were laughing -- with and at each other, which is the best, right? Things may be heavy and fraught, but they also badly need to be lighter, too. We are the election and social issues. We are our struggles and our feelings and our deep desire for a different kind of sandwich for lunch, maybe. But mostly I find that we just want to relax into our lives with people who understand and are after the same basic satisfactions. And also we really want to be heard, and connected, somehow. It's easy to forget how badly you need that until  you get it again.  

I'll absolutely go back next year. I'm looking forward to it being a much, much better season around here, and to celebrating that. As soon as those Aiming Low people get their acts together and pick a date, I'm putting it on my calendar.  You should, too, but not too many of you. I don't want this getting too big, except for you, and maybe that other person. 

 

Lost in Laramie -- Spirit Day 2012

The big failure of my trip back across the country in August was not the part where I got stopped by the police. It was the fact that in a fearful reaction to being stopped by the police, I got lost in Laramie, Wyoming, trying to look for the place where Matthew Shepard died. 

I had started my trip off by going to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis with Faiqa, a place I really believe should be a strongly encouraged elective for all of us, especially those of us who were born after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed on that site. At the end of the tour, the curators have put together an exhibit of other groups in our culture who bear that terrible word of "oppressed" -- minorities of all colors and ethnicities, gender identifications, and sexual orientations. 

I cried and cried my way through that museum, and it has not left me yet, the way I felt. It is creepy, and unnerving, and yet so important to stand in the spot from which James Earl Ray fired the shots, to look through thick glass into the room where Dr. King last hung out, to read stories of incredible bravery from people who sat at lunch counters and walked into schools and wouldn't leave stores or vehicles or even specific seats on vehicles, because they were so damned tired of being not just second best, but not treated like human beings at all.

The audio and the film clips blew my mind. And I wondered -- because there is no way I could put myself in the shoes of the people of color who did these things, just not earthly way I could imagine -- if I'd have had the strength, as an ally, to do what some, but not enough, white people did back then. It scared me to feel like I wasn't sure. 

*************************************************************

When I knew that I was going to drive through Wyoming, I couldn't stop thinking about Laramie, or Matthew Shepard. I'd seen the play, The Laramie Project, many years ago, and it wrecked me. Probably a lot of us know the story by now, that Matthew was at a bar and got messed up with some guys who chatted him up and then eventually took him out to some pasture to beat the crap out of him until he was dead, because he was gay. 

I still close my eyes when I type it. It just makes no sense. 

Vote however you want, pray however you want, be physically and emotionally and/or contractually involved with whomever you want. I genuinely do not care. But to kill a person, for a sexual preference, for any preference, for any reason, defies explanation or excuse, obviously. 

Anyway, after my  little run-in with some troopers, I was nervous about the wild, wild west. I had googled around and tried to find some specifics, but what I found wasn't very specific. It also came to my attention in the commentary that the people of the town where Matthew died had gone to some efforts to camouflage the site of his murder, mostly through street name changes, and I'm telling you, Google Maps failed. A well-meaning person with a Wiki and bad directions indicated where the spot was, anyway, from I-80, with the caveat that anyone who went there should be careful and look out for any pushback from the people who lived nearby (This is one person's opinion. I have no idea if that would have happened or not. Mary Mother of God could live there, I have no idea, but please know when one is traveling alone across the country, there are some things to take a bit more seriously.)  

I just wanted to go by there and say I'd been there, really. I wanted to pay respects. It felt very, very important to me. I insanely wanted to say to the air that I was sorry, that you can change street names but you can't change facts. 

And no, it doesn't really matter, if a person goes to a place or not. I can I'm sorry sitting here. I can talk to my grandma and not go to the cemetery. But one of my leftovers from Catholicism is ritual, and marking a spot. It's saying that something shouldn't have ever happened to a person, in the place where it happened. It's shedding a tear and leaving a flask, maybe. It's some kind of recognition. 

But I was afraid, that's just true. I didn't trust my own safety at that point, or the sun to stay in the sky or a police officer or -- even worse -- some homeowner with an attitude to have anything better to do, even if I am unfailingly respectful of private property. So I stopped and dilly-dallyed at a Wendy's, and noted that damn, there are a lot of police cars in this town, and I drove by the University and the directions started to fade to black and none of the signs said what they were supposed to and just a bit out of town, I decided that this was probably not going to happen. 

Dumb, pointless, thwarted, whatever. I was just really sorry about it. 

*************************************************************

I do not have fond memories of Spirit Days in high school. I didn't have a terrible high school experience, but I've never been into forced merriment, put it that way. I also didn't know who I was then, at all, or what the person I was supposed to love was supposed to look like.

I knew shunning and shame and embarrassment, for the things I did and said and the things I was assumed to be. I learned what it meant to tacitly apologize for myself, to shove down my natural inclinations of personality and behavior to suit my culture, in all senses of that word. I  learned what it meant to have other people attempt to define me, to tear me down, lessons I began to learn in junior high, really. 

I also wasn't always nice. There is one person I would like to apologize to, now, if I could find her, which I can't, and anyway, it's no guarantee she'd want to hear from me anyway. Our words stick, for good or bad. 

In many ways I haven't changed a whole lot, except now I know what I wish someone had told me then: that it is up to me to define me, as terrifying as that may be. It is up to me to identify who I am and who I love. It is my job to speak out, to identify atrocities, ask why they happen, why we allow them, and what our response to them will be. It is up to me to say that each human being on the planet is made how we are made, and in our particular combination of blood and bone and chemistry, heart and soul and spirit, it is no one's right, not anyone's, to judge or harm us for the very state of our existence, as long as it is not harming anyone else. 

It is hard to know that at 12, or 16, or 24. It is still tough, some days, at 41, but it is easier. And so to sit by and not reach out, and back, and through the complicated garbage of four decades and say "Who you are is fine. Her or him or them or whatever, figure it out, you are safe," is a responsibility. And to say, "Leave him the hell alone. Who do you think you are?" is the equal and opposite. 

It is our responsibility not to allow "bullying" in the context of how LGBTQ teens are treated to become another buzzword or a societal given. It is to constantly ask how it can stop, to demand evolution, to ask for accountability, and to celebrate progress. 

I will wear purple today, in what could feel like a frail offering to anyone, particularly any young person, who suffers needlessly, but is really like lighting a candle or walking a labyrinth and saying names over and over. It's a ritual and an act of hope. It is important because there should be no more Matthew Shepards or Trevors or Taylors or babies yet to come who are mentally or physically abused because of who their minds and bodies tell them they are, who their soul (because that is where this comes from, really) tells them to love. 

I'm okay with this Spirit Day. 

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Thank you to everyone who has ever and continues to listen to my story with an open heart and absolute acceptance. 

Duran Duran Live -- Encore

I grew up surrounded by music, an environment my parents provided out of their love for it that has served me well throughout my life. When I'm not getting enough of it, especially of the live variety, something goes sideways in my world that has to be put back on course. 

So it was that I drove to Portsmouth, Virginia, yesterday, to see Duran Duran live on the first day of a trip I'll tell you about soon. I had seen them in October, the latest in a series of their concerts I've gone to that altogether kinda sorta make up for the fact that I missed seeing them on the Seven and the Ragged Tiger tour in 1984/85. That one was special, as in off the crazy train of awesome hook special, because I got to shoot some photos of the show from the very front of Constitution Hall. 

Very front. As in, that is John Taylor's hand, and I took it, so, yes, that is where I was. 

 

So I can say I did that, one time. That was a pretty big deal for me.  

Sarah took that, and lets me use it when I want to. Thanks, Sarah. 

Last night I wasn't in the photo pit, nor did I even have my big camera with me, because I didn't know the venue well enough to know if it would fly to have it or use it, and there is nothing more aggravating than getting stopped with a camera and my car was all the way over by the Coast Guard building and, well, iPhone, it is you and me, as usual. (It turns out it probably would have been okay, but I was actually kind of grateful not to have to deal with it.) (Every time I walked or drove or parked by that building, I said "AHOY!" aloud to myself. Don't you wish you were there? No? Yeah, I totally understand.) 

Ntelos Wireless Pavilion is a cool spot, an outdoor performance space on the water that is covered with white tent-like things that make it look like a much tinier version of the Sydney Opera House. Except yeah, it's totally not, and it's in Virginia. I catch crowd vibes quickly, and these people were out to have fun. Portsmouth was drinking beer and watching music this Wednesday, you guys, and it was fun just to be among them.

I also hadn't road-tripped to a show in years, probably since I saw Pearl Jam in Toledo in nineteen ninety-something, when I was living in Dayton. I liked being a stranger in a strange land inhabited by some of the most vocal, devoted Duran Duran fans I have ever seen, men and women, young and as old as I am, maybe even older, if that's possible. 

My highlight was overhearing the guy in sunglasses who came bounding from the stage area before the show to show his friend his setlist AND the lyrics to Planet Earth. I don't know where he got them, but he couldn't have been more excited. He'd seen them at Hampton Coliseum in 1984, I know that much now, and they were AWESOME and are STILL AWESOME. Yesterday appeared to be his Duran Duran Christmas and high school reunion combined. Favorite part:"Let the Music Play" is in the band's pre-show house music rotation. He recognized it, and yelled, pointing towards the heavens, "LISTEN! It's SHANNON! From the EIGHTIES!"

I like being around happy people, and happy people on music? Better. He was incredibly loud and in my ear with this, and I didn't even care. 

So, the show was fantastic. It might have been my favorite of the five I've seen. I like that they bring the same level of energy and range and crowd interaction to every show. I like that they are fun. I like that they don't play to some less-than-two-hour phone-it-in standard. I like that they have a gorgeous stage production. And yes, I like that they are still cute. (Because they totally are.) 

But most of all, I love the music, the old stuff and the new stuff. Of course I'm emotionally wired to react to The Reflex and Wild Boys, Notorious and especially the oldest stuff, like Planet Earth, which still gets me moving like no other. But I really like Girl Panic,  The Man Who Stole a Leopard, and the title track from All You Need is Now. It's a solid album. My favorite artists are those who keep reinventing over the years. This is why I love Indigo Girls, worship at the Prince altar, and cannot wait to see what Lady Gaga comes up with in ten years. This is why I can't get with Chris Cornell's solo work, because it's not...good. This is why I mourn Janis Joplin and Jim Croce especially hard, and why I'm sorry Amy Winehouse couldn't kick her demons. This is why I took myself to see The Red Piano in Vegas. Yes, Elton John is one of my personal and musical heroes (it's deep, I'll tell you about it sometime maybe, how I even forgive him for The One.) And one of the reasons is that he has changed so much, and tried new things. The wealth and fame of a pop/rock/whatever career doesn't guarantee or necessarily motivate this, so I appreciate growth and change in artistry more than anything. 

I'm happy that Duran Duran stuck around, and that they keep making new music, and that they keep touring a central part of their lives at what must be rather a sacrifice to their personal lives, but hey, I guess it's good work if you can get it. 

I'm especially grateful that they played "Save a Prayer" before ending with "Rio" for the encore. They didn't play it in October, and I thought I wouldn't hear it again. Thankfully my phone died (the only time you'll ever hear me say that, I'm pretty sure) before that, so I could focus on the music. I hope the girl next to me wasn't too freaked out by the lady next to her crying like a fool through the entire damned thing, but I couldn't help it, and oh well, I'll never see her again. 

"Take a chance
Like all dreamers can't find another way
You don't have to dream it all, just live a day"

It's interesting how favorite songs can change meaning for us as our lives change. That was good. Just live, one day. I can do that, I think. 

I need a life that includes more music, and more experiences like this, is the thing. That's what last night told me. This show gave me what I needed to help put me back on course. It made me remember my better self, what feeds me inside, what makes me smile and sing and dance. I haven't had many experiences like that lately. You never know what will do it, but sometimes you do. You just have to remember. You just need a reminder. 

I'm hitting the road better for it, I know. 

Thank you to Sasha at Red Magnet Media for hooking me up with the tickets, and to Duran Duran for making a day in my ordinary world rather extraordinary. These shows burn into my brain in the best possible way, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to share this experience with you. If you're in or near Atlantic City or Pittsburgh, they'll be up that way this weekend. Snag a ticket and go. I totally would if I could.

June in Motion

I can tell already that this is going to be one of those rambly life review posts, but this has been a crazy couple of months, y'all. 

I don't even know how else to describe it except I've been in so many places -- my body and my suitcase and my as-ever hastily-assembled documents, as well as my heart and my mind -- that I'm losing track. I actually forgot how old I was the other day, although I can't remember why I wanted to remember in the first place. I just know I didn't know, that for a stretch of seconds I was ageless, which was nice, although my bones and my blood pressure disagree. 

Since the end of my job at the end of May, I've been to Seattle for a week, then home, then Charlotte for what amounted to almost a week. Now I'm home, and due to go to Philadelphia for a long weekend of work and hopefully some more exploration of the city. After that it's here again, and more work on this strange, confusing, and sometimes exhilarating trip into what's next. 

Seattle was a gift of a trip to a city that I loved from the first few minutes I got on the light rail from the airport to downtown ($2.75 and easy peasy -- nice!) and saw...well, I saw a lot of stuff, but pretty much all that stood out to me at first was trees. Trees everywhere, a sight for East Coast eyes, reaching feet and feet and feet up into the sky. I'd never been to the Pacific Northwest at all before, and every trip into a side of the country that is still so new to me after decades of going only as far west as Chicago opens my eyes and my heart to a landscape that still doesn't quite make sense to me outside of pictures. 

My pictures are gathered here. I took very few of the conference, because I wasn't working the event in that way, and a scant few of the several outstanding meals I had while I was there. Believe me when I say that I ate almost nonstop the entire time, and had not one single bad meal. It's a kickass food town, and I'd go back with that agenda in mind any day. Like, say, tomorrow. Would someone like to invite me back tomorrow? Because I will rearrange some things.

Elliott's Oyster House, for instance, had me at "frozen mignonette." 

That is not sorbet. Oh no. That is that glorious vinegar, shallot, wine oyster concoction that I love, except it is FROZEN. SUCH a good idea. I want more now. 

Anyway. Seattle was nice. I have a highlights post in my mind that I should be writing right now, except right now what I'm trying to do is make friends with  my blog again in sort of a conversational way. See how that's working for me? Yeah. 

If Seattle is my new girlfriend, North Carolina is my road girl, POLITICAL CHOICES NOTWITHSTANDING, and Charlotte has its moments. 

This weekend was unfortunately marred by an increasing struggle with hormones (hi, 41, thanks) that seems hell-bent on wrecking my body and my serenity for a week out of every month lately, but it also meant time with some friends I apparently really needed to see and feet back on streets with sights I completely understand, like wild roses in front yards and barbecue and sun that slants in a way that will always put my incorrigibly MidAtlantic soul most at ease.

This looks just like the way back of my grandmother's back yard, for instance. I saw so  many wild roses on this street, a time machine of wild roses, if you will, down to the little old lady I finally saw fanning herself on the front porch and watching me take pictures of her rose bushes. She nodded and smiled and said good morning, obviously sweetly proud when I told her what she knew, which is that they are so beautiful. 

I had luxurious time and meals and drinks with women who make me think better and want to write better, and who seem to see a better side of me (albeit filtered through the wires and tubes you're looking at) that I completely miss at almost all times when it's just me and a bathroom mirror and crushing self-assessment. (Thank you, Tanis. Thank you, Katherine. Thank you, Robin.) I had a beer in an Irish pub that doubles as a gay bar when it's not hosting Kenny Chesney concert pre-parties, served by a wrinkly dude in skinny jeans and a Guinness t-shirt and what you'd think would be an incongruent cowboy hat (however, no, it worked just fine) who seemed to delight in yelling at the myriad straight couples, "Don't say we're GAY FRIENDLY! We're totally NOT FRIENDLY!" And that is when he and I fell in conspiratorial love, so I ordered chicken fingers and stayed through all of the Hank Williams, Jr., on the jukebox to listen to him go on and on about the day.

I sat outside with Robin, who is simply put one of the best people who lives on this planet, and listened to insane boat horns on cruising hotrods. Every time they'd honk one of us would say something mildly funny, like, "Fuck you. No, really, fuck you this time again," and then we'd laugh and laugh. At one point I said "You know, I'd just maybe once like to have peace and contentment." She looked at me and immediately said "That is never. going. to. happen." and we laughed for minutes. It was, interestingly enough, one of the most useful things anyone has ever said to me, so I'm pretty sure that everything else is going to be fine from now on. 

The internet may suck sometimes in soundbites, but these friends I have. These friends. I can't imagine my life without two things the most that I've gotten from the internet. One is how it's helping me reshape my professional life, and the work I do every day and where I get to do it. But two, and the winner by a mile, is these FRIENDS. I am lucky cubed and squared, and I don't know math at all so I just made that up. 

A lot of other things have happened on and between these trips, things that have me catching my breath at things I read or see or experience, because I suddenly see myself anew in them or they touch a part of me now that hurts where it didn't use to or makes me smile bigger than it would have before. I have tears in my eyes most days, but it's good,  it's good, it's all working for good. It's also really hard, some work that I'm doing, so hard I cannot explain it yet, some growing into this better and ultimately most true self that I've come to decide was real along the way. It's amazing how even the most difficult things are way less than devastating when you know after years of gray and indecision that they are simply right. I'm learning that there's amazing relief and calm acceptance and even joy in some of what looks like suffering. 

And I know it's why I will look back at the details of this particular stretch of roaming a few cities as a necessary backdrop for the important stuff, as I've known it would be since I decided a few months back that I needed to do what I'm doing now. As much of a homebody as my heart can inherently be, my soul needs motion, to manage my anxiety. (I don't expect this to make sense to anyone.) Geographic cures may ultimately fail, but sometimes they don't, and there are those spaces in between that reassure me that I'm moving, that I will always have some access to my own particular kind of freedom. That how things had been for a very long time was simply not how they were supposed to be, something I always knew but wasn't sure how to really fix until now, in the physical shell and daily routine of this woman. And that every minute now of hyperventilating in public restroom stalls and wiping my eyes and stepping back out into the light and fixing my lipstick is in her better service. 

Because this is truer than it's ever been, from me to me, in this 41 years. I can finally say it, Robin. More than even still (all apologies to the Commodores), I think I finally know that I just do. 

Ring

I signed up for Ali Edwards's 31 Things, and promptly began skipping all of the daily emails, reducing their loveliness to the guilt of that which I ignore in my inbox that I actually ask for (which is different than my disdain for the cascade of crap that I don't ever ask for, ever.) I have a sick cycle of obsession with daily prompts and online courses that I sign up for and perpetually forget about and run out of time for and blow off -- especially the ones I pay for. But I've been interested in Ali's work forever (although I honestly have zero interest in scrapbooking -- it's more the documentation aspect of her vibe that I like) so I thought I'd try it again. 

I'm going to start with Day One and make my way through as I can. I'm going to discard the ones I don't care about, too, which should make things easier and less stressful for me. But I hate to discard anything, so we'll see how that goes, too. Welcome to my latest exercise in working out my codependence AND weird combination of slacker-overachiever issues on the internet.

Day one asked us to write about jewelry that was important to us. That was pretty easy. 

*****************************************************************************

My grandmother was the opposite of a fancy or affected person, not in any way concerned with clothing beyond being more than presentable for church and social functions. At home, she wore ancient clothing and recycled in her own way before it was a community mandate, out of economic, rather than environmental necessity. She did not easily buy herself new things. She got her hair cut in a utilitarian manner, and did not dye it after she turned 50. As for jewelry, she wore a wedding band, and that was pretty much it, although she'd wear a necklace, from time to time, and a mother's ring that didn't quite fit over her large-ish knuckles. 

In her ancient armoire, a light blue plastic baby wipes box held several rings, from a time before she was a wife and mother, along with a cameo necklace. Her father gave them to her, she said, for various occasions. I remember taking them out often when I would nose around in her stuff as a child. 

Sometime in my early 20s, she decided to gift these pieces out to her four granddaughters. I received this one. 

It is the only important thing I own. 

I mean this sincerely. I care about other material things. My car, my computers (losing those would suck), my cameras (that would suck more), my tv and my clothing and all of the other stuff that I rely on to make my life go along. But this is the only irreplaceable thing I own. 

We could talk about the irony -- that I am the unmarried, oldest child, and it is a vintage engagement ring that people pay big bucks for now. That it's cracked in the back. That I never wear it, and yet still have carted it along with me through every move, every life transition, riding in my purse in the front seat of a Chevy Cavalier and a Honda Civic and a big old moving truck and Volkswagen Beetle, along with a battered knock-off first edition of Leaves of Grass, the only other thing that I will not trust to movers. I have taken it out from time to time and worn it to feel closer to her, to my life force, to something, flicking my thumb across its broken back in an odd, comforting gesture.

Mostly it lives in my bedside table drawer, in a ring box from Naples that held a long-lost cameo that I think ended up with my great-grandmother. If I lost it, I would die inside. I thought I did, once, ashamed to speak of it for months, carrying the tiny tragedy in the back of my mind, until my mother asked me one day if I wanted grandma's ring back in my own stuff, that she had moved it into her drawer for safekeeping when I moved, that we had forgotten to make the transaction at the end of the moving chaos.

I breathed. The world was put back solid. 

I have no idea how much it's worth. I've been asked a couple of times to check that out and I don't want to. I don't care. I don't want to know it's worth a lot in case that weighs it down, and to tell me it's worth nothing is pointless, because no dollars make a difference in that context. 

If I ever get married, in the the spiritual or legal sense or both, I know that I will adopt it as my outward symbol of that occasion and I will wear it. It will transfer all of its super powers to the hope of love and depth and longevity of that relationship, and it will absorb all of the momentum and meaning of that happening in my life, because I know it can do that now, like nothing I could buy in a store after all of this time.

And if I don't, I'm not sure what will happen, and I don't really feel compelled to blurt that out right now. I feel like it is somehow time to claim it, though. I need to trust myself, that I don't need to leave it in a drawer, and to trust it, that it doesn't have to stay there. The days of this life go by faster and faster, and leaving anything locked up until the next thing happens or doesn't seems to be the ultimate folly, the fear-based action, the delay of joy when I don't have any to spare.

The day she gave it to me, I was in shock. I didn't feel worthy. But she always wanted things out of their boxes. She wanted us to have what we needed and what she seemed to think we deserved, so it's way past high time to channel that energy and assign elsewhere.

It is the only important thing I own.  

Birth

I've been following along with the story of a new person born last week. I know his grandmas, and I've been privileged to follow his story online, as he was born and lived his first days, and it touched me so much. He was so loved even before he got here, it was a nice touchstone amid some upheaval for me, and honestly, I'm not touched frequently with that kind of circle-of-life energy. All of mine in recent years has been watching elders pass, with no replacement of babies and new life to take their place, and as much as I loved those people (even my poor little old dog, because I did love him, so much) it's hard to have that kind of energy without a counterpoint. I also don't live among children now, or pregnant women, or that many people, honestly, so it was nice to even see it from a distance.

Tonight I saw a picture of this tiny person meeting one of his grandmas for the first time, and I broke down in a way that I'm glad no one saw besides me. I cried and cried and cried. I took a bath and then a shower to wash my hair, and then I cried again. It came up from somewhere deep inside of me when I saw an image of him meeting someone who I knew at first glance would catch a grenade for him, but more likely would just sit there holding him, providing for him, showing him what love was in eyes and song and hands. It ignited a conscious longing for deep connection, appreciation for the pure love I saw in what I was looking at, fear of never finding it, gratitude that a tiny human could experience that kind of devotion in a world where it's so needed.

It was a lot tonight. I have had several days of internal work and struggle, of letting go and rationalization, and it was a difficult, clearing, healing cry. I never turned the tv on again tonight. I sat here instead and wanted to talk about all of this to my little blank blog box, because it is in the face of the most fearful times in life that I know for sure that the good and deep things I'm seeing is the stuff that matters.

Photo by Schmutzie. Used with permission.

And even when I'm so afraid that feelings like I saw in images tonight won't touch me, personally, again or maybe ever, it was good to know today that they -- and my reaction -- existed. It was good to know I could take it all in, even partially, at a distance, when normally I am so busy talking myself out of needs and feelings and the right -- yes, the right, it appears -- to human connection.When so often I feel on the outside looking in, not really a part of any system or community, but an observer. A child and a sister and a friend, for sure, but on some primal level lacking, no one's mom, no one's partner, no one's provider, no one's end of the day.

These are the voids that frighten me, for whatever reason. These are the spaces of deepest longing for me now.

We function regardless, I know, because I do. I understand my value. I don't feel worthless, I'm not sorry I passed over options that could have led me to that and left me holding the tragically wrong cards, either. I'm just being honest about what hits me in the hardest places. Because I think it is that desire for better, that acknowledgement of where the wounds are inside of us, of what we desire and what keeps us from it, especially, that helps us be better, that helps me be better, anyway. And on days like today even more, I appreciate the people who have shared their stories with me online, even when I didn't like them, even when they have been uncomfortable for me, because it is this kind of access that so often instructs me, that gives me a view I'd never have otherwise. I see a brand new baby in the embrace of a grandmother in an airport and I say yes, this is it. This is one of the things that truly matter.

I hope I am a little bit different tomorrow. I hope I am a little bit better. I hope I can hold on with less denial and shame, with more courage and intention, to what I might want from this life I am not only crafting for myself, but that I am allowing others to participate in, too. Because I'm at a place where I am still so flawed and afraid and road-worn, but also ready, by necessity and desire, to be better at that part.

Laugh at the Trouble of Parting

This Mother's Day, I'm working with Clever Girls in support of Macy's Heart of Haiti to shine a light on the "trade, not aid" program, which provides sustainable income to Haitian artisans struggling to rebuild their lives and support their families after the 2010 earthquake.

A few days before my grandmother died, I saw her for what I'm pretty sure now I knew would be the last time.  It was late in the evening, in the last days of December. My own mother drove us to the nursing home on the way home from a family reunion, where I sat by her bed under the flourescent bulbs and wept and couldn't stop. She stroked my hand with her one good one, bewildered. 

"Whatsa mattah? Whatsa mattah? Don't cry. It's okay. Don't cry. Why you cryin'?" 

"Because you're so sick," I said. "And I can't help you. I don't know what to do."

More to the point, I told her the truth, finally: that I did not know what I would do when she left me. I told her there weren't enough tears for her. At 38, with a mother there to support me and the wherewithal to do whatever I needed to, really, to get by, I just did not know what I would do without her 85 pounds of awesome and her overall input in my physical world. I did not know how to live without her, because I'd never had to. She existed in my life from infancy as an ally and an advocate, for various reasons and in various ways. They never tell you at the beginning about this part at the end. 

I wasn't supposed to tell her these things. She was frail and sick and often confused, her body and her spirit finally caving in to rest after more than a decade of recovery and relapse from a massive stroke and God knows how many mini-strokes in the daily mix. She had never gotten over her anger at losing her physical abilities or her independence, but she showed remarkable flexibility in moving around and adapting to what were sometimes really hard transitions.

I showed up for visits to the various facilities she needed to adjust to as her care needs changed with snacks she didn't want, clothing she wouldn't wear, and an obsessive desire to fix her television that she brushed off in favor of the crappy local news channel. We talked surface stuff, mostly, things she wanted to hear about and know, a work schedule that she said was too grueling even if I told her it was no big deal, and how could I even explain the internet to her as a time-waster? (When I started working in senior services, she'd concluded that I was a doctor for old people. She bragged to the unimpressed residents at her dining table that I was a doctor. I corrected her a couple of times and then I gave up.) I'd sat with her in ERs a couple of times, done some bush league elder advocacy that didn't compare to the stuff my parents dealt with daily when it came to hospital and assisted living and nursing home staff and back again. I cried on elevators and in my car when I left, but I did not let her see it, not ever, until this cold night at almost the end. 

I really should have known better than to stress out a dying person. It seems like with all my years of counseling training, I'd have picked this up in one of the manuals, and yet there I was, dripping tears on her bed sheet. I fail end of life in my own family. 

However, my grandmother did that night what I've learned over my conscious lifetime that moms do. I learned this mostly from her, and from my own mother, her daughter-in-law, with some other data from my aunts, my friends with kids or even without who possess maternal energy that lights the world, from my childhood stories of Mary that are my strongest mythical tie to Catholicism. I quite simply believe that Marie White stopped her own hastening dying process to attend to me. Her eyes cleared and she looked at me and she told me that  this was a real shame, yes, but I would be okay. She transmitted to me with her eyes and with her touch a desire to stay and stop my pitiful sadness that was as strong as it was impossible. 

She obviously would never have left me if she had a choice, and beyond me she would have chosen not to die at all, because she liked being alive in a practical, curious way, as well as the way of a caregiver. I actually believe that she stayed alive through as many health setbacks and eating problems and winter colds and crazy surgeries because not only did she not want to leave her family, she just didn't think that she should, or that it was a good idea. And this all sounds as crazy and woo-woo to me on one level as it sounds completely rational on every other. It is the very heart of love. And if one has been lucky enough to be loved, and protected, and fought for like that, I'm not sure what else you need. 

My grandmother would have thought that talking about being a parent was ridiculous, honestly, like talking about air or groceries or the veracity of the Holy Trinity. Some things were and that was that. Her dad died pretty young and her brother was killed in World War II, she took care of her sister and pitched in for her mom. In her world of duty you did what you did and you got what you got and what she got was four sons and seven grandchildren and that was okay too.

Yes, she worked her butt off. No, I cannot speak to her dreams and inner thoughts, but from all appearances she really liked her kids and the grandchildren when we came along. She would have always rather been with us than not. She liked helping children learn and being a parent and a coach (although not always the most tactful sort) came rather naturally to her. I think she would look back at me from whatever beyond she's in to say that this is a whole bunch of goings on for something that made a certain amount of sense at the time, that of course I cried that night, of course it was a real shame that she had to go, because she'd have much rather stayed here. As the Irish funeral prayer my sister found for her funeral program says,

"All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting,  when we meet again."

She believed that. I didn't, so much. Now I do because I like the concept, nothing more, and whenever I read these words, which is admittedly often, I smile. 

I did not go back to see her after I left the room that night, and she died a few days later. I have felt great guilt at various times since that I didn't witness her passing closer to the time, but I've come to the conclusion that we finished our business that night. It was the exchange that we needed to have to mark the end of a profound human relationship. It left space for everyone else to have their time, to say what they needed, or not. I'm pretty sure our parting words that last night were the usual mishmash -- be careful, I'll see you soon, come by when you can. 

One brief moment, and all will be as it was before. 

When my family drifted out of the funeral home the last night, I hung around until my uncle said that I had to go, that I needed to leave my grandmother sometime. I conceded and did this, but although I was grateful for the nudge, I really was, he wasn't exactly correct. As I move through the world I know all of the hype is true: I never will leave her, and she will never be gone from me. My Kubler-Ross stages of grief have moved in waves for three years, they've gone out for brunch together, picked up hobbies and gone on a few beach vacations by now. But when you aren't ever left by a person in the truest sense of never leaving, you're much less inclined to do it yourself (unless you have a personality disorder or are just not the grateful sort, I guess. I'm talking best case scenarios here.) It's the best kind of luck and the only thing about love I've ever needed to learn. That, and that when you're a mom or someone like it, you'll try to take a break from a process as arduous as dying to attend to what an overgrown weeping kid needs, I guess because you've never ever ignored anything she needed before, so why start now?

I know I've been loved like that. I don't need to ask for more.  

Thank you to Macy's Heart of Haiti for sponsoring my participation in this “Share Your Heart" promotion. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions expressed here are my own.