The moment has passed and the storm with it (I was driving through most of it), but this is what came to mind as the sky darkened and the rain fell.
= = =
Today is raining, today is storming.
Today is cuddle time.
Today is game day.
Today is sexy time.
Today is candle glow and a good book.
Today is silence, a notebook, and pen.
Today is the patter of rain marking a beat for your mind,
Taking your heartbeat with it.
Yesterday, I cleaned out the fridge, put away the groceries, entertained my daughter, washed a sinkful of dishes, and then made dinner for our little family of three. I gathered them around the kitchen table and we had dinner and dessert together. Ben and I discussed our day and Elizabeth chimed in with whatever she so desired. Oh, and I also bought and arranged flowers for the kitchen. In those moments of domesticity, I felt blatantly…female.
Now, don’t burn me at the stake just yet. Hear me out, please.
I am female by sex but I also identify strongly with the female gender and a lot of the roles that are usually prescribed to women. I do not believe that women (or men, for that matter) should be bound by “traditional” gender roles, but I cannot deny the fact that I get a warm fuzzy somewhere inside me when I am taking care of my family and friends, whether it’s a meal, a mug of tea, a load of laundry, or a needed hug or cuddle.
I had a career as a teacher before I had my daughter a year and a half ago, and I am looking at perhaps getting back into working. I’d rather stay home with Elizabeth, I can’t lie about that, but I also acknowledge that, in our current society, that is not a forever choice that I think I can make. Not if we want to accomplish some of the plans that we have for our family and home. I have some wonderful female friends who have gone back to work after having their children, launching into successful careers in their chosen fields, and I could not be prouder of them. I know some incredibly strong women, women who juggle work and families and hobbies with an aplomb to which I can only aspire, and I cannot help but admire them. I have friends who are adamant that they are no use with housework, can’t cook, etc. I am not aficionado at cooking myself (trust me, I’ve ruined many a dish) but I find a measure of peace and accomplishment in taking care of my home and my family. And, yes, I have cooked and cleaned in pearls and high heels before, just to say I did.
I am not entirely sure what my point was in writing this; I think I had an idea that was more coherent in my head, but that’s all right. Thoughts poured out on paper, right?
This week, the Today Show is rebooting their #LoveYourSelfie series, with the further tagline of “Reclaiming Beauty”. Yesterday morning, the TODAY anchors premiered this series with a segment of them standing before mirrors and describing several things, including what they see when they look in the mirror and what in particular they like about themselves. Many of them admitted that, when they look in the mirror, they often are looking for what they can change but Lester Holt’s assessment was that, for fifty-five, he thought he looked rather good and was encouraged in that he thought that all of his hard work is paying off. He did say, however, that he does not care for his receding hairline.
I know that I have written several posts over the years about my personal battles with self-esteem and body image, and it is an ever-evolving series of struggles and triumphs in my life, even more so now that I am a mother. I really like the #LoveYourSelfie series and it’s encouragement towards self-esteem and acknowledgement of a person’s individual beauty, in whatever form it may come, so I decided to give this exercise a try myself.
I stood before the mirror today and looked at myself and I noticed a few things. Firstly, I noticed that I checked to see if my hairstyle complemented; what did it do for me? I have my hair in pigtails today, pulled low behind my ears, and I think that they make me look younger than my thirty-one years. I remember when I first wore them like this in high school; I was called “Pocahontas” all day long and was even asked if I have (Asian) Indian in my blood (in genuine curiosity, to which I replied that I am pretty sure I don’t). But I also noticed that, after a cursory inspect, I almost always lift up my top and turn to view my profile, or, more specifically what my tummy and abdomen look like. I think I am looking pretty good for a woman who gave birth only sixteen months ago. I can always afford to tone a little more (would really like to get back into bellydance conditioning for that) but I am still pretty pleased with my progress.
What do I like about myself? I like my eyes and my hands. I am short but busty so my shape is very different now from when I was younger, even just before I got married almost eight years ago. I like my legs, how they are longer than one would expect, as I was told by friends in college when they saw me in jeans for the first time. I think, bit by bit, I am growing more and more accepting of my body and my self.
Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I still see that seventeen-year-old girl that stepped out into the world half my lifetime ago, and, sometimes, I just cannot help but smile at her.
This is an annotation to “It’s That Time of Year Again”.
I finished the original post late last night but, even after I went to bed, it kept turning over in my head, this realization of happiness. I know that happiness is not only a feeling. It is a conscious choice. I realize that I am choosing to be happy. Is life always easy and a spoonful of sugar? No. There are days that are rough, difficult, lonely, and challenging. I know that, for Ben, teaching and pastoring can be a huge drain on his energy. Being at home with Elizabeth all day long, managing house and money, cleaning and errands and chores can all be a bit draining on me, too. Sometimes I do not know where to put my foot next, what is the next step to take, and that can be disheartening, the waiting. BUT I am choosing to be happy in the midst of it all.
We have so much to be thankful for. We have a home of our own, we have vehicles to transport us there and back again, Ben has good jobs, I am able to be with Elizabeth right now, and we live in a nice community with family close by. We are greatly blessed. Granted, I could always want more, demand more in order to be happy – a bigger house, perfectly-manicured lawn, a higher-paying job for Ben or myself, a different neighborhood. But I don’t want to put my happiness in things that can be taken away from me or lost. That’s not the point. Things or money or position aren’t happiness, they wouldn’t make me happy. I have a husband whom I love every single day, a daughter whom I adore, a family that is kind and generous and simply amazing, friends who bless my heart all the time…these are the things that matter in my life. It is for all of these things that I am thankful.
I am choosing to be happy every day. A friend of mine pointed out that choosing to be happy is a wonderful thing but so also is seeking out happiness. I don’ t know how much I seek it as much as cultivate it. As I consider it, I realize that I cultivate happiness in my writing, in trying to help and be there for others, being a helpmeet to Ben, teaching my daughter joy and encouraging her curiosity in the world, and in getting lost in the world of a good book now and again.
How do you cultivate happiness?
**EDITED 4-26-14**
The day after tomorrow is my birthday. I will be thirty-one. And, as usual, I have given very little thought to it – well, thought as in planning anything for it. Such a change from when I was a child/teenager.
When I was little, I could hardly wait for my birthday. Birthdays meant breakfast in bed and the present that I had wanted most (or so I thought) before I went to school that morning. I also got to see my cake, made by a baker that I still buy cakes from when I visit home. That sort with the hard icing, the kind that was so delicious and sweet that you could smell the sugar when you opened the box. Lady Lovely Locks, Rainbow Brite, Care Bears, My Little Pony. She could do any design. Absolute confectionary happiness that I got once a year on my special day.
As a teenager, it meant a sleepover with my friends and not a single parental complaint as we stayed up late, at junk food, watched the sappy or silly movies, and listened to boy band music they had already heard ad nauseam almost any other day throughout the year, times about eight. My sixteenth birthday brought about a brand-new formal gown made by the best tailor I have ever had aside from Elen verch Phellip, and an all-expense-paid dinner for me and a handful of my friends and cousins, who ended up getting up on the live music stage at the restaurant and serenading me as a surprise.
In college, there were quite a few of us with birthdays in April so that usually meant a communal trip out to Applebees or the Chinese restaurant formerly known as BoBo’s for dinner and/or dessert, birthday cards in the campus and regular mail, and maybe flowers delivered with a card from my parents. And usually some teasing from my upperclassmen friends about me being “twelve”, as I was a year younger than the others in my class.
My twenty-fifth birthday brought about a surprise visit from my parents and a birthday dinner set up for me with the family and a goodly number of my best friends. My poor husband, the secret weighed heavily on him, as he was stressed to get the house cleaned the yard mowed before my parents showed up and trying to do so without telling me why was just too much for him. He finally told me the afternoon before, which sent me into a flurry of cleaning and raking the yard when he was done mowing. I was taking the next day off anyway. 🙂 It was a lovely dinner and time with friends and family.
My thirtieth birthday came along with several big changes in my life. I was a new mommy with a four-month-old baby girl. I was lucky enough to have some friends come up and take me and Ben out to dinner and dessert. It was really nice.
This year, I’m turning thirty-one, and I am terrible at planning things for myself. But, as I think about it, there is one thing that I have on repeat in my mind. Something I have to admit and do so with absolute gratitude.
I’m happy.
Upon my husband suggestion, a few days ago, I embarked upon a new show: BBC’s The Paradise. Based upon Emile Zola’s novel The Ladies’ Paradise, it follows a young woman named Denise Lovett who comes to the big city to work in her uncle’s drapery shop. Unfortunately, business is so poor that he cannot offer her a wage. The singular shops along Tollgate Street – the draper (dressmaker), milliner, haberdasher, cobbler – are falling into ruin because of The Paradise, a great new department store which has opened in Tollgate street and is attracting all the customers.
Worried by the fact that her uncle cannot offer her a place, Denise is fortunate enough to spy a shop girl being evicted from the premises that very morning. She applies and is taken on as the newest shopgirl in Ladieswear at The Paradise. Denise Lovett proves more than equal to the task, even under the most imperious Miss Ashley, who rules over the department with an elegantly iron fist. Denise is talented and a visionary when it comes to selling clothing to upscale ladies, marketing, and getting the name of the Paradise into the ears of the populace. The most apt line for series 1, in my opinion, was this small statement: “I don’t want to marry Moray. I want to be him.” The passion for The Paradise has caught Denise as soon as the story begins.
As we go, we meet the people who are the life and blood of The Paradise – Mr. John Moray, his partner Mr. Dudley, Pauline, Sam, Clara, Miss Audrey, Arthur, Mr. Jonas, and Mr. Lovett in his drapery shop across the street, along with Lord Glendenning (an upper class) and his grasping daughter Lady Katherine,with whom Mr. Moray is entangled from the first we see him.
As with all of BBC’s period dramas, The Paradise is sumptuously costumed and gorgeously set. The realm of Ladieswear and the glittering counters of The Paradise draw even me, a woman who has grown up in the normalcy of the department store. The gowns, gloves, and hats call to the Victorian woman that inhabits my soul, and she rejoices. I am as of yet unsure how I feel about the end of series 1. It does end on a happy note, but with that sense that it is that burst of sunlight just before the storm clouds roll in.
Series 2 releases in late April so we shall see if my gut holds true.
Author William Goldman asserted that, since 1642 B.C., there have only been five great kisses in the history of world. For me, there are even fewer perfect cups of tea but, today, I had one. I cannot tell you how long it has been (or if even EVER) since I have made a perfect cup of tea but I did today.
Black tea, water, honey, lemon, and sugar, all melding together into the most exquisite cuppa I have had in many a year. It was so perfect that I took it and went back into Elizabeth’s room where it was quiet and rocked in the glider while I sipped it. It was all I could do to keep from heading all the way upstairs into my little garret (what I call the bedroom in our finished attic) and hiding there with my treasure in a teacup. But I sat, inhaled the heat and steam, and let the velvet sweet slip past my lips to warm my form. It not only soothed my aching throat but also my tired body and weary heart and soul. It was the sort of perfection that stops time and lets it just hang in the air around you like snow without wind. All too soon, though, I was looking into my cup at the last sip or two of golden brown that filled the bottom of the silver-lined porcelain and I actually despaired. I didn’t want to finish it because, if I did, that meant that I would have to get up and carry on with life again. But, eventually, I did. Because I had to. You can’t hold time captive forever.
The character of Edward Bloom in “Big Fish” tell us that “They say when you meet the love of your life, time stops, and that’s true. What they don’t tell you is that when it starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up.” What he did not tell you is that this is not only true of love but of those all-too-few moments of perfection and peace. Life may pause for a handful of precious moments, but then you are swept into the maelstrom again, longing for another bundle of minutes as sweet as that . For me, right now, it’s that perfect cuppa.
Life is a blinding mix of the mundane and the extraordinary. Extraordinary highs that can soar us above the clouds and extraordinary lows where we are dashed to earth all in an instant. It is the latter that only takes a moment. Years of work, effort, or even love can be cracked and shattered in a moment. It was a such a moment that Denise was experiencing currently.
Denise Riley wrung the dishtowel in her hands, quite unsure of what to do next. Her life was turned totally upside down and she wanted to just sit and sob. And so she did, her tears dripping onto the thick envelop in her lap.
Her little girl was going to college!
How often we wish for another chance
to make a fresh beginning.
A chance to blot out our mistakes
And change failure into winning.
It does not take a new day
To make a brand new start,
It only takes a deep desire
To try with all our heart.
To live a little better
And to always be forgiving
And to add a little sunshine
To the world in which we’re living.
So never give up in despair
And think that you are through,
For there’s always a tomorrow
And the hope of starting new.
Author – Helen Steiner Rice
What is the part of the story that most readers fear/enjoy most? That’s right: the end. Sometimes, the end of the story is satisfying, with all the ends tied up in a way that makes sense and gives a feeling of closure to the tale. Sometimes, the ending leaves us wanting to tear our hair out and going, “WTH did you just DO?!” But something that all of us realize throughout the reading of the book, – the ones that are the most impactful, the most life-changing – is that it’s not the end until the end. So when the characters, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine in Alison Weir’s Captive Queen, are going through hell, we as the readers know that it’s not the end, not yet. So we keep reading. We don’t just stop, because the bad times are not the end of the story.
That was the sentence with which I began my week: Bad times or wrong things are not the end of the story. I was sitting in church, this past Sunday, letting my brain and heart work back over the past few weeks, searching the Bible for guidance and encouragement. Honestly, I felt a bit downcast and distraught. But, then, during open worship, a member of our church stood and said something extraordinary that has stuck with me all week. She said that she was so thankful that the bad times or the wrong things that happen to us are not the end of the story. We don’t have to give up because we aren’t at the end yet and we can trust God to carry us through. And that lodged itself in my heart and has stuck there all week. I emailed her that evening to tell her thank you for sharing, that what she said what just what my heart needed to hear, to be reminded of.
A few days later, the above picture showed up in my Facebook newsfeed, posted by a friend. I couldn’t help but smile and say to myself, “I guess this is my theme this week. Bad times are not the end of the story.” And I found myself using that phrase over and over again throughout the week in attempts to encourage others who have been having a rough time. It’s not the end of the story. You’re not done in yet. Just hold on, hang on. Just a few more pages, a few more chapters. The story is not done. Choose each day to end the story as well as you can. End well. That is another phrase that kept popping up in my life this week. The story is not done, you can choose how the next chapter looks. Yes, there will be things in our lives that throw us for a loop, hurt our hearts, and oppress our minds. But we can still choose to write the next pages well, even if it is just in little ways – choosing to give a smile, asking someone else how they are doing and trying to give an encouraging word, spending some time in the sunshine. Little things, day-by-day choices, words on the page. Words add up to sentences, sentences to pages. Bad times are not the end of the story. Keep going. It’s not the end. Not yet.
MWGS: Mom, Writer, Geek, Superwoman 