Wanderlust Part 2

    
     An arrow lay across the floor shaped by shadows, light, and maybe my own wishful thinking. A sign, probably meant to redirect my mind to the church sermon I should have been attending to. But instead, my mind wandered after it, the thing my body longed to do but couldn't. I traced patterns of rugged bronzed mountains sewn in copper thread across my new scarf. Another shape rose up like the Arc De Triomphe with silver lines of thread sparkling like the headlights on the Champs Elysees at night. The pattern on my boring brown acrylic crocheted hobo bag (appropriate name) spoke of tilled fields or lines of sediment along a canyon wall.
     I was so carried away on this train of thought (wishing for a real train) I didn't see the shadow of the boat the arrow pointed at till later. I should have noticed it as I blame the Pixar animated movie, Moana for reawakening my wanderlust. This exquisitely beautiful and touching narrative about a young woman called by the ocean, ignoring family and duty, following her heart on an adventure across wide seas full of peril, excitement, and the unknown spoke to me. When she sings the line "One day I'll know, how far I'll go" the pressure of the tide mounted in my breast swelling with salt water and longing. I can still feel it travel down to my fingertips, the place I channel all my unfulfilled energy, writing it out before it consumes me.
     Because my feet are planted firmly in my black faux leather boots grounded to duty, to husband and children, landlocked from lack of funds or available time. Where is my window, bound between soccer practice, Cub Scouts, school, work, Christmas plays, cookie exchanges, all fun things but not the antidote for this nagging virus making me weak-kneed and dizzy with desire. I see castles in Spain in the clouds. Castles I long to conquer with camera and the wisdom of a aged tour guide.
     Unable to fulfill my heart's quest, I shut down, grow numb, a mental hibernation that makes people pre-judge me to be cold or distant. It's a coping mechanism to tamp down the longing, my rational brain preaching the merits of doing my duty. Ignore the call to adventure. I am not my protagonist, unfettered and flush of funds or a sturdy horse.
     I am blessed in life with home, health, family, and friends. I find joy in the simple pleasures. Yet, just under the surface, fighting for freedom lives this other woman, the gypsy girl, ancestral daughter of sailors still genetically predisposed to go where the wind and sea call.
     Someday, I'll let her free. Follow the arrow to adventure.

Learning to Fall Off a Bike

     Today, I girded up my loins in Lycra yoga capris and steeled my nerves to teach my youngest son how to ride his bike. My fellow parents will understand my reluctance to accomplish this milestone as it becomes a lesson in patience and letting go of more than the handle bars. 

     For with the removal of the training wheels, comes the removal of keeping them safe. While not placing them in mortal danger, this is one of the first acts of parenthood where we need to learn to watch them fall. And it sucks! What hurt my son physically today, hurt my soul. I cringed with every fall, sucked in my breath with every scrap, and felt lower than a cockroach digging in manure every time he looked back at me, his eyes saying “what kind of monster lets her child fall and then tells him to get up and try again?”

     But I did. I smiled and called out encouragements. I even swore a little under my breath and over it too as I jogged alongside him balancing the center of the handlebars between my fingers and sweating like a demon in hell. I wiped his tears and threw out every generic inspiring phrase I could remember. “You can do it.” “Just keep trying.” “Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.”  Believe me, I got tired of hearing my own voice and wanted to punch myself in the face. But we persevered.

     He’d teeter from side to side begging me not to let go, all the while I knew I had to. Knew it was for his benefit and independence that I release my hands and watch him go. Even if it meant watching him fall. I forced myself to keep my voice calm and even, not making a big fuss, as I lifted the bike off his six-year-old body, inspecting his small bruises and encouraging him to do it all again. 

     But the biggest challenge of all was learning not to quit. It would be easy to throw in the towel and go home. Leave it for another day or another day or another distant appointment in the future when our nerves would both grow miraculously strong as steel and the ground would be less hard and the bike steadier. That’s the easy way out. The one I couldn’t teach him or myself today.

     No. I had to teach him not to quit on himself or me. I had to let him show himself what he was capable of. Show him the courage, dedication, determination, and skills he possessed deep down inside. He learned that he was stronger than a scraped knee, braver than self-doubt. He could conquer his fears, one bike ride at a time.
     Then came the moment, he sailed forth a few yards ahead of me over the grass, perfectly balanced and pedaling his little boy heart out. My words sang out, “You’re doing it.” “You got this.” And I saw his eyes, the high-beam of his smile saying everything I knew this moment could accomplish. He believed it himself. His cries of fear transformed into cries of elation. “Mom, did you see me.” “I want to do it again.”
     With fear behind him, we chased the thrill of accomplishment. Still sweating but with a new spring in my step, I ran alongside him, working hard and harder to keep up as he rode further and faster ahead of me. Another metaphor for life and maybe part of the reason we delay these lessons. Because once our children learn to overcome their fears and embrace their abilities, we are left to chase after them and their independence as they grow further ahead of and away from us.
     The hardest part of parenting is letting go. Letting them fall. Letting them know, that while we will always have their back, they can do things on their own, unsupported by training wheels and insecurity. 

    

Postcards from Heaven

     When I was little, I'd quiz my mom with questions about heaven. She'd smile and sigh a little, probably exhausted by the barrage of questions I daily volleyed at her, and answer "I don't really know. No one's ever sent a postcard."
     She'd half-laugh and then melt as my face fell, unsatisfied at the answer. She'd wrap me in her soft, squishy body and whisper in my ear, "I just know it's beautiful because it's full of love."
     My mom also believed heaven was more like an invisible dimension surrounding us instead of the celestial image high above us. I like her version. It lets me picture her next to me watching her grandsons play and commenting to my dad that my youngest has not only my curls but my sense of mischief.
     So maybe we don't get a glossy 4 x 6 postcard of a celestial city glittering with streets of gold and a "Wish you were here" tagline from a winking angel. But I believe our loved ones send us signs just the same. And I'm a natural born skeptic who scoffs at vortexes, magic crystals, psychics, and guardian angels, the latter because mine is either lazy or constantly in the bathroom when my klutzy moments happen.
     Yet, I've had occasions in my life where I felt like my parents were sending me signals from beyond. My dad, true to his larger-than-life personality seems to be the loudest and most often like the wild postcards he'd sent daily of London punks in the 80s or castles around Britain.
     I remember one June a couple of years after he passed around the time of my birthday, he seemed adamant to tell me he was there. I kept seeing random images of a Welsh dragon or a daffodil, tokens of my Welsh father, just when I was feeling blue. 
     One day I'd been crying in the car, frustrated that I couldn't talk to him in our weekly five minute phone calls that he was famous for. He'd mastered the art of cramming politics, history, pop culture, and love all in those expensive international minutes, he could barely afford on his phone bill. I longed for the stimulation of those conversations, even when he got my hair on end with constant nit-picking and rantings, because they made me feel. They made me feel worthy of so much passion and energy, his molecules bouncing off the speaker and transmitting themselves into my living room. His intensity radiated light like one of the aliens in Cocoon. So there I was silently crying over my steering wheel on I-5 South passing downtown San Diego, numb to my favorite view of the skyline and harbor when I saw the Welsh license plate cover on the car in front of me.
     A few days later, I had chills as I entered a small jewelry shop in the picturesque mountain town of Julian. I had been humming a song in my head, Nana Mouskouri's First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, a record he bought the day I was born and sang to me in his enthusiastically off-key tenor. As I opened the door, the song greeted me, playing over the store's radio, the chill of surprise warming like a hug across my chest. I smiled to myself, glowing with memories. For days after that I'd see signs with his name, Allan, an unusual spelling and the Welsh word for "out".
     Then when I first started writing again in September of 2014, I'd get these manias where I'd plot out ideas while singing show tunes in the car between dropping off kids at school. But I started to have a dry spell. I felt like a recovering addict, the writing high had been so visceral, I felt numb without it. So there I was singing Don't Cry for Me Argentina, a song he taught me when I was three, and a golden Welsh dragon and the sign Cambria, the Latin word for Wales appeared before me on the side of a van. And my brain clicked. The plot started writing itself again, warm fuzzies crawled up my chest and into my brain and danced a jig. I kept seeing the sign again, coincidence maybe as the Cambria company is located her in the Coachella Valley. But it sparked my imagination and brought a smile to my face whenever I saw it or passed the office on Cook.
     Finally, when I found my Claddagh ring hidden in a straw basket of seashells in the guest bathroom, I danced with joy. I'd had my 1st one stolen when our house was robbed. It had been a gift from his trip to Bunratty Castle in Ireland, a symbol of his love and my Celtic heritage. But he replaced it with another one that I vowed to never take off but unfortunately did and then lost it. To find it in the shell basket, a symbol of the sea we loved, the salt in our bloods from generations of Welsh sailors bringing Welsh coal to the four corners of the globe, I knew it was from him. A postcard with the words, "Tell my girl I love her" the last words he said to my mom before he died written in his tight, nearly illegible script. I wear it as a reminder, a connection to my dad and his passion.
     My mother's postcards are quieter, more subtle. I see signs from her in art, mainly in my son, Will's passion for creating and playing with her old watercolors. He's poky like her and quiet at times. But never to be underestimated. He is her largest postcard, one of those giant, pasteboard ones sold in novelty stores.
     But I will never forget the lady I met walking along the shore of Shelter Island in Point Loma. She was short and curly-haired, and my scrap-booking friends and I stopped to talk to her one dusky evening. She was from Pennsylvania like my mom and arty, but more than that - she had my mom's spirit. My dearest childhood friend, Mandy, noticed it too. It was like my mom just wanted to chat, to enjoy an evening walk along the coast, and be apart of creative people. I walked away full of her, a hug around my heart, a smile imprinted deep on my face.
    Now I also wear her love around my neck, a golden thread of her pulling me in close for a snuggle or my own childish arms stretched up to reach her, as I drape her Celtic cross over my head and rest it over my chest. I bought it as a Christmas gift for her when I lived in Dublin, something to match the one my dad gave me, something that said I missed her even when I was enjoying my Irish adventure, something that reflected the beliefs we both shared. And I was devastated when I couldn't find it after her death.  I searched her house, her clothes, her wallets, anywhere and everywhere I could to find it. I needed to clothe myself in something of hers after she left. I needed a talisman against the gut-ripping agony I felt when the numbness would recede and memory would bite.
     For many years, I felt the necklace was gone - lost or somehow burnt with her ashes melted into her bones. Then one melancholy day while going through her pictures, I found a box of old silver. There hidden beneath tarnished silver bowls and the cheap pewter candy dish  I bought her at Yellow Front was her necklace. I put it on feeling instantly connected to her. I wear it still, usually hidden beneath my t-shirt close to my skin.
     Some may argue these signs are nothing more than coincidence. That we read into something trivial something that's not there. Maybe. But I choose to see the connection, the celestial nudge reminding us that we are still connected, still loved. If anything, maybe we read into these signs hidden meaning because the meaning is hidden within us. We are the biggest postcard of all, their words written across our personalities and memories, their love stamped across our lips and foreheads and anywhere else they kissed us when they were alive.
     What does it matter if it's real or not?

What matters is it brings us peace and joy.

Confessions of an Introvert

     I recently saw a blog post on Scary Mommy explaining why the blogger doesn't want to be friends with other moms. And while I totally support her choices and understand the awkwardness of making mommy friends, it had a bit of a biting tone to it. Like she was putting down the other moms while justifying her standoffishness. Snark sells these days.
     But while I feel solidarity in her quest for solitary time, I am here to say, it really is me and not the other moms. I am an introvert. I've known this about myself since my mom would shout it through my door as I holed up in my fluffy, sea-foam green, unicorn-postered room with a good book.
     I like my space. I like silence so that I can hear myself think. That and so I can hear the voices in my head more clearly. Don't get the straight jacket yet, I'm a writer, not schizophrenic. And if you research the personalities of many famous writers, you will see that most of them were introverts if not downright curmudgeonly hermits.
     Now sometimes I can pass myself off as social, an extroverted introvert of sorts. I do enjoy parties, especially if I know all the people there and don't have to make a good impression. I can be naturally bubbly and outgoing, even dance on a table or two, sometimes cracking a clever joke or witty comeback. But I have to be in my element and feel comfortable with people first.
     But it takes me time to feel people out. This requires quiet observation, a study in trust to see if I can be my quirky self with this other human being. I've been shell-shocked by too many mean girls who laughed at my unusual comments or told me I was stuck up because I liked big words. No judgment here, some of those girls have grown up to be compassionate, loving moms and good friends. I just like to be sure of my audience before I let loose my own brand of weird.
     Some mommy acquaintance should be glad of my quiet because once I do feel comfortable with someone, it's hard to shut me up. I'm a whirlwind of thoughts and ideas. But I am more comfortable talking about ideas than chit-chat. Again, not a judgment but an observation. I stumble over my tongue trying to talk about soccer games or the weather or how many hours I've worked out or what I've eaten. My brain doesn't retain mundane details very long, it skips over them to ponder the mysteries of the human persona. That's why I often call myself the smartest ditz you'll ever meet.
     Meanwhile, other people who don't know me well or who have just met me have sometimes called  me stuck up. Makes me wonder if there's a resting snob face, as I don't believe I look bitchy, just detached and a little zoned out. I've also had people question by intelligence, but no I really am smart just a million miles away plotting out stories. So don't make me plot your demise in my next narrative by insulting me, it will make the Walking Dead season opener look like a children's book in comparison.

     So to all those moms at soccer practice and the school pick up line, it really was me and not you. You are lovely people with your own quirks but my kindle book on my phone is calling me like the wardrobe to Narnia into other realms and realities. And with two attention-demanding children in my house, I must soak up all the alone time that I can. It's the only time I can complete a full sentence in my head and discover those things that make me me. And I can be an amazing friend, when I'm comfortable.