I Can See Clearly Now

Oy...must make coffee! I came home last night after teaching two three hour classes and a two hour break where I waited for online students who needed research help, and I just fell on the couch, er futon. Wiped out, more mentally than anything. I am done, and living in this inbetween state is wearing me down. I do like coming up with creative lesson plans, enjoy interacting with the students, but will not miss the grading, the policies and procedures of the school, and most of all am delighted to be escaping a dress code! So until the next three weeks wind down, I must find some happy place to be and get through this relatively smooth and blunder free.

I wish you could see me typing this right now. I've just tried to begin this paragraph three times only to erase. That tells me I am 1) in need of coffee badly or 2) in need of writing down my thoughts more and more as this feels really jerky and not fluid at all, or 3) having a moment of tired laziness or weary fear of laying down what is really inside me.

First, I'll make the coffee and then see where I'm at. Be right back. Make some for you, too, how bout, while I'm gone?

Back and several things dawned on me while preparing the coffee and Thomas muffin. Here's what hit me not necessarily in this order:

1. I have got to get back to my morning pages routine, meaning writing three pages of anything and everything that comes to me first thing in the morning, Julia Cameron style (sorry when I do it here as I am now). Going back to this method will help me to focus on the now, the moment and to see my next move.

2. I have been blessed with two ferociously wonderful daughters. Last night Leila texted me, asking me to stay awake till she got home, that she and Sarah had a surprise for me. I could since Friday night is my "date night" with Bill Mahr and HBO, and after that Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley, and anything else I can find with good conversational substance. So I was still awake when she texted she was on her way! Sarah woud be home later. Let the Mother's Day titillation begin! I love that my girls cannot wait to present a gift once they have purchased it, so I knew Friday night had become the new Mother's Day.

She arrived and told me to close my eyes and a small bag was placed in my lap. Opening my eyes, I saw it was a new cell phone! Nokia, smaller than my now vintage one, but still a little chunky, the way I like it. Too thin of an electronic and as my manhandling and tearage with book covers and pages will show, a lean cell phone may soon go the way of a snap here, a drop there, and in the end, irreparable damage.

I loved the phone and called Sarah who was on her way home to thank her, too!

"Close your eyes again," she directed. I did. Now a larger bag was put onto my lap. I opened my eyes to see a Brita pitcher! Hoorah! My girls know that I take water bottles, wash them, toss the lids into a mug filled with hot water, and take our currently cracked Brita pitcher and pour filtered water into the bottles. Once the paper wrapping around the bottle falls off or the bottle itself collapses from the hot water, I dispose of them but man it saves on lugging cases of bottled water from the store.

Hoorah! Fresher water in a sturdier container!

Then came a new can opener! No, not an electric one, a hand held one, but it is a far cry from the miniscule opener I bought probably ten years ago and what I still use. Leila and I laughed hard over this gift. "Let's frame the old one for posterity, " I said, and we both agreed. So I'm going to buy a memory box and position the butterfly small opener into the center of it and hang it with laughter and pride.

Then she instructed me to close my eyes yet again! This time a very large box came into my lap and I saw, miracle of miracles, that I was the owner of a new set of pots and pans! I ripped open that box, assembled each beautiful piece and in one fell swoop bagged my old stuff, given to me long ago by a boyfriend who said he bought the new cookware for me in order to have what he needed while cooking in my kitchen. No surprise we didn't make it, but the cookware did.

"Have we given you 1950s housewife stuff?" asked Leila, suddenly doubting herself. "Aboslutely not!" I exclaimed. Well wait a minute, I thought, I am a 1950s housewife or soon to be; I just don't have a husband who comes home at night nor anyone to answer to or beg attention from. "I am Martha Stewart!" I announced to a laughing Leila.

"Well, there's more coming on Mother's Day," she said.

And here I thought we were just going to eat Indian food and catch a movie.

I am a blessed woman.

3. I survived two days of clutter upheaval as Sarah painted her room. I stepped over big piles of bedding, shoes, and books and am still looking at my granny cart perched beside the dining table, see shoes scattered under the futon and about the room, and I am still functioning, breathing evenly, plotting my escape from the agonies and ecstacies of the workplace. I can endure what I was not able to do for long (messes of any kind, piles of any substance) because I am free. The stuff of my desire, the wishes of my freedom have been stuffed down deeply inside me for decades but now my own clutter cleaning is in progress and I am okay, alright with all of it.

4. Today is my niece's 15th birthday! Happy Birthday Sienna Marie Hastings. You will always be the baby with the shock of black hair and the laughing eyes. You will always be loved by me.

And now, on to those morning pages. I feel better.