30 Days of Blogging, Day 27: Something you have to forgive yourself for

A couple of weeks ago in Sunday school, I was talking to the Confirmation class about baptism.  We were discussing how you have to live your baptism every day by believing you start with a clean slate, as far as God is concerned.  I pointed out that, once you get to be my age, you have lots of things you need to be forgiven for, but the hardest thing is to forgive yourself. 

I don't think I could single out one thing for which I need to forgive myself.  Generally speaking, I'm still working on offering forgiveness to my 18-to-22-year-old self, who made a lot of dumb decisions that I can hardly bear to think about as an older person.  There are any number of explanations for why this happened, but the bottom line is, I made those choices.  Plenty of people around me were making smarter decisions--I was just too lazy and selfish and generally immature to do the right thing, much of the time.
 
Fortunately, after I'd moved across the country to go to graduate school, I outgrew those traits very quickly.  When you're completely on your own, you learn that being a person others respect is pretty important--you can't expect much from them if they aren't able to expect much from you in return.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 26: Describe Your Dream House

I can't say the house I'm living in right now is my dream house, since it's not situated in the woods and doesn't have a spectacular view.  But I love my house.  I do wish I could make a few substantial improvements, though.

I wish the kitchen looked like this.  Right now I have a tiny galley kitchen, which makes it hard to do anything very complicated.  Also, there's really no room for more than one person in the kitchen at a time.  I'd like to have a kitchen where people can cook together comfortably.   

And I wish I had an outdoor office, like this.  I realize it would have to have a window air conditioner--otherwise, it would be unusable for six months of the year--but I like the idea of being able to leave the house without actually leaving home.   


 And, finally, I wish we had a piano like this in the living room:

I love listening to my husband play the piano.  He doesn't get to do it very often, since we only have a small keyboard right now, but in my dream house there's a baby grand piano where he can play anytime he wants.

30 Days of Blogging, Day 25: A song that makes you think of someone besides your significant other

There's a scene in the remake of The Parent Trap where California Lindsey Lohan has just arrived in London, pretending to be her identical  twin, London Lindsey Lohan.  While she's briefly taking in the major sights of the city, The La's song There She Goes is playing in the background.  My daughter once told me that this song made her think of me--in fact, when she was very little, she told me she couldn't watch The Parent Trap when I was away from home on a trip, because that song made her miss me too much.

So now, of course, whenever I hear that song, I think of her as well. 

30 Days of Blogging, Day 24: Make a Play List for Someone

I'm coming down with a cold and I feel like crap, but I'm certainly not going to punk out on a 30-day challenge when I'm this close to the finish line.  I am going to cheat a little bit, however; instead of explaining each song, I'm just going to say that my husband will know why each of them is on the list.

Is Your Love in Vain, Bob Dylan

Kiss Off, Violent Femmes
Straight up, Paula Abdul
Eternal Flame, The Bangles
The Flame, Cheap Trick
Under the Milky Way, The Church
Back in Your Life, Jonathan Richman
My Baby, Scruffy the Cat

30 Days of Blogging, Day 23: Something you wish you had done

One thing I wish I had done is start running sooner than I did.  I played a lot of sports when I was younger--softball, volleyball, basketball.  When I got to junior high, though, it quickly became apparent that some girls were much more serious about sports than I was.  I'd always just had fun with whatever I was doing.  So I stopped playing sports after volleyball season in 8th grade, and after that I didn't do much of anything physical.  I took the occasional aerobics class in high school and college, but that's about it.  I always had friends who'd run for fitness purposes, but it never occurred to me that I might do this. 

Flash forward about 30 years, more or less.  I've taken my daughter and two other girls from our church to a weekend Advent retreat at a local church camp.  During free time, one of our options is to hike up to the cross that overlooks the campsite.  This is what the girls want to do, and they beg me to come along.  I'm from Idaho; what's in front of me is not a mountain, not even close to a mountain.  It's a hill.  A steep hill, but a hill nonetheless.  So I say fine, we'll do the hike.  When I say this, it does not occur to me that I haven't climbed either a mountain or a hill in a very long time.  Like, 30 years, more or less.

Halfway up the hill--maybe not even halfway, actually--I start to realize that I'm in big trouble.  My legs and shaking and my heart is beating faster than I think it's ever beaten before.  I can just barely breathe.  But there's no way to give up and go back down the hill, because we're hiking in a line.  Also, I don't want to abandon the girls.  So I keep climbing, and I start praying, and I make it to the top of the hill.  This is when I start considering that I might have to tell the counselors who've led us up here that I can't make the climb back down, because my heart is really racing and I really can't breathe.  I have visions of being taken down the hill by EMS people, on a stretcher, wearing an oxygen mask.  I can't do that to these girls, though.  I can't scare them that way.  And I certainly can't have the camp director calling their parents and saying Please come pick up your daughter.  The chaperone from your church was too fat and out of shape to make it through the weekend. 

So I say a very earnest prayer:  God, please get me down off this hill.  I know I'm too young to be this out of shape. But I swear, if you get me down off this mountain, I will change.  I have to be able to get these girls back to their parents.  Please, God, just let me get these girls back home and I'll do better.

And somehow, when it was time to start hiking again, I got down the hill.  I fell once, because my legs were weak and shaky, but I made it back to the campsite.  And when I got back home, later that day, I told my husband what had happened and started looking for a treadmill.  I didn't want to be able to make any excuses--rain, heat, whatever.  I wanted to hold up my end of the bargain, since God had taken care of me when I asked for help.

At first, I could barely walk a mile on the treadmill.  That's how out of shape I was.  It's humiliating to think about this now, but it's true.  Before too long, though, I'd moved up to two miles.  Then, as I was trying to improve my speed, it suddenly occurred to me:  maybe I could run.  I had never, ever thought of myself as a runner, so I really wasn't sure if this was something I could do.  I started off very slowly, holding on to the arm rails of the treadmill while I ran.  When I gained a little confidence, I let go.  Then I kicked up the speed.

Now I love running.  I love the way I feel after a good run, tired but full of energy at the same time.  I love the way deep breathing clears out your brain, and the way an endorphin rush just lifts off the top of your skull.  When I'm in a good routine and running several times a week, I feel really powerful.  Like I could run anywhere.  I'm not competitive about it--I don't run 5ks, and I didn't join the team my university put together for the upcoming Rock-n-Roll half marathon--because I'm hard on myself, generally speaking, and I know I'd start feeling bad about running if I didn't do as well as others.  That's why I don't run with a partner, either.

This is something I do for myself.  And for God, of course.  I just wish I'd started sooner.     

30 Days if Blogging, Day 22: Something you wish you hadn't done

Once you become a parent, I think your list of regrets in life multiplies exponentially.  Every day, it seems, there are choices to be made, and you never know if you're doing the right thing.  You make what you think is the best decision at the time.  But lots of times, you only get one shot--you can't go back and fix what you did, if it turns out you did the wrong thing after all.

When we first moved to Texas, Jordan was starting first grade and Andrew was still in preschool.  He was four years old, so he needed just one more year of day care before he started kindergarten.  I found a center close to our house, checked it out, and made arrangements for Andrew to start spending his days there.

We'd had terrific child care in Columbia, Missouri--it was university-sponsored, led by teachers with college degrees and staffed by students studying to be teachers.  I knew it wasn't likely we'd find anything we loved as much as our previous day care center after we moved.  So when I started having some misgivings about the place I'd chosen, I tried to write them off to an unfair comparison.  I never had any concerns about Andrew being unsafe or in danger, but he obviously wasn't happy.  He's always been a shy kid, so I told myself that of course the transition to an unfamiliar place would be difficult.  He'd adjust. 

But when his feelings about day care didn't improve, I told myself he only had to be at this center for a short while.  Less than a year.  I'd just started a brand new job at my university and I was nervous about proving myself.  I was trying to earn tenure.  Looking for a new day care would have taken me away from work during the day.  I didn't want to make it look as if I couldn't balance being a mother and a professor just when I was at the start of a new career.  I'd worked so hard to get where I was.  I tried to focus on the big picture and keep in mind that I was supporting my family. That without my job, we'd all be much more unhappy than Andrew seemed to be.       

When the academic year ended in May, I took Andrew out of day care as soon as I could and spent that whole summer at home with him and Jordan.  I hoped some time (and a super fun summer with Mom) would just erase that whole awful year from his memory.  While I don't think he suffered any long-term damage, he still says "I hated that place" every time we drive by it.  Clearly, he has not forgotten that experience. 

If I could go back and make a different decision for him now, I would.  Even if it meant ending up at a different university, or in a different career altogether.  I had other options.  I didn't take them.  And I really wish I had. 

30 Days of Blogging, Day 21: A story about your best friend, past or present

I could tell you something about my friend Susan, from high school, or my friend Jayne, from college, but instead I'm going to tell you something about Steph, from grad school.  I met Steph toward the end of her undergraduate career, right after I'd started my M.A. program.  I've always thought she was incredibly cool--she's one of those effortlessly hip people who exist entirely in a world of their own making.  I'm still jealous of her ability to just sit back and let life happen.  Whatever comes up, she deals with it and moves on as if that were always part of the plan.   

Steph grew up in Kansas, which is where I met her, via our mutual friend Bruce.  Later, she moved to Idaho--where I grew up--because both she and her husband were looking for jobs, and the university where I was working always needed adjunct faculty.  About a year after that, I moved away from Idaho again, to work on my Ph.D. in Missouri.  (Steph drove cross-country with me during that move, since I was traveling with an infant.  She was my co-pilot/car nanny, and indispensable in both roles.)  In the meantime, our friend Bruce had moved back home to the southwest, decided on a career in medicine, and gone to med school.  Later, he accepted a job that brought him back to Kansas.

So now Steph lives in my hometown and occasionally checks in on my elderly parents.  I live in the southwest, Bruce's old stomping grounds.  And Bruce lives in northwestern Kansas, near the tiny town where Steph grew up.  Steph tells me that there are days, even now, after 16 years of living in Boise, when she looks at the mountains and thinks "I live in Idaho."  But, no doubt, those moments are followed by her realization that this is exactly as it should be.