Isn’t it funny (well, not funny “haha”, but funny “odd and not really very funny at ALL”) how one incident in your life can kind of knock you for a loop but in the process awaken twinges of pain from old emotional injuries, or even reopen serious “wounds” that hadn’t quite healed yet? As if it isn’t bad enough to have this current-day crisis, you also suddenly have to deal with ghosts and memories and hurts from your past.

In a way though, I’m glad that this happens. Obviously, if the old wound were healed, this wouldn’t be a problem in the first place. It’s plain that the old pain needs to be dealt with, but it’s so hard to do that when you’re surfing the wave of current pain.

Something truly awful happened to some people I love last week. I have tried not to say too much about it here, simply out of respect to the folks involved, plus it’s really not my story to tell. I’ve spoken directly to several of my friends about it, but blogging to the world would be inappropriate. Thank goddess, things seem to be leveling out for them, and no permanent physical injury was done. The other injuries will heal in time, and hopefully some of them will be even stronger in the broken places when the healing is done. It scared us all badly, though. It scared me badly, and when all was said and done, I found that it had uncovered several of my own bad wounds from the past. Some of them were obvious ones – mother/daughter abandonment stuff and a lot of other mother/child issues, and some of them were surprise elements, like having to face the fact that the majority of my family simply does not accept me as I am and love me unconditionally; or the fact that some of the people that I have loved and admired the most were not at all the people I thought they were, and at least one – one that I loved most dearly - was in fact a cruel and shallow-hearted person, capable of mistreating and punishing an innocent child for the alleged sins of their parent.

Luckily, I am back in therapy a little. I am not able to go as regularly as I did with my former therapist, but it’s nice to have someone to talk to. I don’t feel like I will be able to make as much headway as I’d like to, simply because of time and money constraints, but just some direction might help. I find myself getting angry in these sessions sometimes, something that rarely, if ever happened with Lynda. I think this is due to my therapists’ way of getting answers to her questions, or maybe it’s her assumptions about certain situations. She’s good, and she’s helping, but some injuries need a gentle touch, and that ain’t this lady’s gig, for sure. If nothing else, I think she can help me with the current stuff, the day to day and discipline issues that I have, and that will make a big difference everywhere else, but I think as far as the deep stuff goes, I’m on my own. Nothing new there. I think I need to dust off my notebooks from Riveroaks* and return to some of the skills I learned there.

One of the things that came up this week is a question about forgiveness. I am reading a book called “The Four Things That Matter Most”. I’m not usually one to read ‘self help’ books, but the hospice director asked if I would, and if I’d consider taking part in a discussion on the book at some point. I think hospice is a wonderful organization, and I was flattered to be asked, so I said yes. It turned out to be a good thing.

The book is written by a doctor who often handles hospice related cases and practices a lot of palliative medicine. He created this ‘theory’ to help his patients and their families face and deal with the grief and their relationships. He encourages them to say the “Four Things” to one another while they can, even if it is in the very last minutes, and this book goes on to encourage healthy people to do it as soon as possible, even every day.

The four things are: “I forgive you”, “Please forgive me”, “Thank you”, and “I love you”.

Those really are the four most important things, aren’t they?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I realize that only one of them is really hard for me. It’s “I forgive you”. It’s not that I have a hard time forgiving, it’s that I feel as if I can’t say what I am forgiving them FOR. If I could say it without hurting them, or without them saying that I made it up, then I think it would be ok.

A couple of years ago, I was talking to a family member, one that I’ve been pretty close to in the past, despite our slight age/generation difference. For years, I’d wanted to confront her about something in our shared past, and so in a relaxed, private moment, I did. Her initial reaction was complete denial. It simply never happened, and that was honestly what I’d expected. I pursued it though, and brought up some details that made it impossible to deny. When she confessed that she remembered, I was so relieved, and when she saw that this was not going to be a Spanish Inquisition**, but just that I needed to have that memory validated so that I could go on with the process of processing, she relaxed, and we talked, and my love and respect for her deepened immensely. Forgiveness was mine, and it felt good, I think, to both of us.

But how could I say this to my mother, to whom my entire childhood and adolescence is a lie I created, apparently to hurt her? Or to my Aunt Sue, who is steeped in the righteousness of her age and experience and in the knowledge that she is our most respected elder? Or worse, to the ones who have gone on, like the person I mentioned earlier, who hurt an innocent child? Is it still possible to forgive them?

In my heart, I want to. I crave it. But I made a choice long ago, out of necessity, to not accept any lies about things when I KNOW otherwise. I don’t want to hurt my mother, but I won’t let her hurt me either. My family has asked me again and again to let it go, and just forget the past. If it were something small, one incident, a few incidents, or even a lot of the normal kinds of incidents that families and mothers and daughters face, then it honestly wouldn’t be an issue. I can forgive her for all the things she did. I can even understand them, maybe even better than she does sometimes, it seems. But I cannot forgive, or at least accept, her continued insistence that I made it all up. Even after my brother said, to the whole clan, that I was not lying, that he was there and he remembers it all, too. She still maintains that I am delusional or just mean, I guess. I’m not sure how she handles it, because she absolutely refuses to talk to me about it. If something were to happen to either one of us, this will have all gone unsaid, and there will be even more of a chasm in at least one of us, but I suspect both.

And she's not the only one with whom I have these kinds of issues...

So I guess it has to be done by me, alone, and go unheard. But I’ll know. I can say these things to my mother, and to the others who need to hear these things but possibly never will. I can say them here, so it’s out loud, and in my heart, so that I can hold on to it. Maybe it's a start, or if nothing else, it will raise these questions in your own minds, readers.

Here are some of my most important things:

Please forgive me for being so stubborn, for refusing to settle for just “letting it go”, for refusing to accept what I feel are incorrect opinions of me and of my past. Forgive me for being unable - so far - to find another way to deal with all this pain, mine AND yours.

I forgive you for needing to comfort yourself with denial. I forgive you for being unable to love me as I am, and for being unable to love yourself as you are. And I certainly forgive you for the million small incidents (and many big ones) that caused me to feel this way in the first place.

Thank you for giving me life and good attributes and strange comforts and stories to tell. Thank you for the moments when I am proud of who I am because of you.

I love you.

-to be continued,

-s

*that’s my old Alumni Looneybin

**’cause you know, NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Note: the first bits of this rant are basic ‘weekend update’, fairly boring household stuff. If you don’t feel like reading such blah faire, at least skip down and read my really tremendously wonderful exciting news – you’ll know it when you see it, it has LOTS of exclamation points!


Well, there’s lots of small news… I spent the weekend furiously trying to get things done around the house. I have been trying to replace the trap under my kitchen sink to no avail. I am trying to replace the old and busted metal pipes with some new plastic hotness*, but I can’t seem to get just the right parts to go back in there. Grr. I am probably going to have to break down and call… * duhn duhn DUHNNNNN! * the Landlord and get him to send his son to fix it. Bluh. It’s not that I dislike them, it’s just having anyone else in my house, especially making noise and mess SUCKS. I turn into Rainman when this has to happen. It’s gonna’ be REALLY bad when they have to come fix the bathroom floor, but it has to happen. I bought a shopvac to try to help me handle the TREMENDOUS volume of dust and doghair. It’s funny, now that I have a vacuum that works and works for my house, I like vacuuming. Weird, huh? It cuts the work time down to a fraction, and now, when I try to clean up dust and hair, I’m not just shifting it off of the stuff, up into the air, up my nose and back onto the SAME surfaces. It’s really frustrating when you realize that you are just more evenly distributing the yuck. Yuck.
I also bought some good natural – yet serious – household cleaners to help fight the mold and mildew, some things made out of real orange, lemon and pine oil. That way, after I get some of the stuff out of the house (I also finally rented a small storage space and have begun to move some of my seasonal and extraneous things into that – thanks again for the moving help on Monday, Wetrats, Jamie, X and Erin!) I can vacuum the spaces, and kill the mold and mildew. Yuck and yay.
In other household related oog, I found when attempting to FINALLY turn on the big heater that the gas hadn’t been turned on at the tank. So… I turned it on, and tried ALL day yesterday to get the pilot lit. I finally convinced the lady at the place*** to have a repair technician call me in an attempt to walk me through the steps that he might take if he came out. He did, and I learned all about thermal valves and switch contacts, and got the heater working. I can’t believe that they trusted me with something so dangerous, but hey – they’d even let me have a KID if I wanted one! What are people THINKING? ;)

I also shopped for groceries, did laundry, cooked big for the Mississippi party (more on that later) and cooked meatloaf for mine and x’s lunches for the week, did laundry, got plastic for the windows (x gets that job though, moowahahaha!), took out the garbage, and began the dreaded organization of the summer/winter gear.
That’s all the basic stuff.

On Friday night I took part in a revival of the Upstairs Gallery’s annual Coffeehouse Poetry Night. I used to be one of the honored regular readers, but since the gallery closed to move to a new building, the Coffeehouse – along with all the other wonderful art and programs they have there – has been delayed for the three years of renovation and planning. I was happy when Betsy called and asked if I’d come read, and double-delighted when she suggested that she and I do a piece together to open up the show! We spent two weeks writing back and forth via e and came up with an excellent piece. I’ll try to remember to post it here for your perusal. I have already posted the other things I read, but Chris’ dad read several of his, and there is one in particular that I will ask for a copy of so I can share it with y’all.
All in all, it was a good night. I wasn’t feeling very well, but the work was good, the art show currently installed is amazing and the company was excellent and so were the brownies. Mm! Now that’s a good way to fundraise, if you ask me.

The Mississippi party was Sunday. For those of you who don’t know, a few weeks ago a stranger came into the library, a nicely dressed elderly man with a particularly lovely accent. He said “Rumor has it that you’re from Mississippi…”. Well, ‘turns out he was a messenger from the lovely couple who organize this function where 250+ people from my home state get together for a potluck dinner. Yeah! I was instructed to invite any other Mississippians I knew and to bring a dish that was a homestyle favorite. I decided to bring a big pot of cabbage and sausage, and two big pones of cracklin cornbread. I got there late, and by the time I arrived, most folks had already eaten. My pot of cabbage went almost untouched, but that’s ok, ‘cause X and I love it, and it goes well with meatloaf. The cornbread however, was a HUGE hit! One woman even came to me and said “I’m leaving here to go to my brother’s birthday party, and I was wondering if I could take him a couple of pieces of that good cracklin’ bread! We haven’t had it in years and he would love it if I brought him some!” Several people asked to take a piece home, a few others found room for that instead of another dessert, and a couple of folks just stood by the pan and nibbled until it was all gone, save one piece, which I took to Stewart. : ) Yes, I am a proud Southern girl, I could just picture daddy smiling down on me and my DURN good cornbread, if I do say so myself!
I met several nice people, none from Hattiesburg. They must’ve left early. It was a pretty day, and a nice visit. The food wasn’t too bad, either! ;)

Ok, now for my REALLY BIG NEWS:

I GOT TO DRIVE AN EXCAVATOR YESTERDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here is a picture of the very model I got to drive – WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can you believe it?!?!? It’s a dream come true! I was working on the sink and took a break to go and check the mail and I saw that they had a boom truck across the street, unloading sheetrock for S&A’s renovations. I’d never seen one with a forklift/claw on it before, so of course I was intrigued. I stood and watched for a minute, then went back to my work. When I discovered that my tailpipe needed to be shorter, I went over to ask Michael if I could borrow a saw. He cut it once, it was still too long, so when I went back and asked him to cut it again, I said “I really just came over to get a closer look at the boom truck.” He laughed and said “You really like all this stuff don’t you?” I said yes, and he said “Well, you oughta’ see if John’ll let you drive his machine.” I thought he was joking, but he started walking down where John was digging. The next thing I knew, he’d backed it up to a flat place, and I was climbing into the cab!!!
John was a very nice and patient guy – especially after I told him that the first time I saw his machine parked in Steve and Alli’s lot, I climbed up on the bed of the transport and just LOOKED at it. Maybe that, or maybe he was amused by my SURELY idiot-like, ear-splitting grin!!! John actually owns this machine, and his very neat workman’s chambrays and clean white Santa beard reflected the excellent condition of that nice machine. I knew that it was a big deal for him to trust me up there, and I tried to let him know how grateful I was
He let me work all it’s functions, and let me dig some dirt and put it back and scrape it flat. I got to spin it around and drive it back and forth. It was Sam-heaven! I was only up there for a few minutes, but those were definitely some of the best, most exciting few minutes of my entire life! YAY, ME!!!!!!! Only thing is, I’m HOOKED now. How will I get my next fix?! Chris pointed out that now that I know how to drive one, it will be MUCH easier to steal one, MOOWAHAHAHAHA! * cough! * Ahem. I mean, ‘Haha! Isn’t that funny? Steal one! Ha! As if!’ :mmmmm… traaaaaaackhoe….
: )

Well, that’s all my basic news, weekend update, etc.
If you have any digging that needs to be done, call me! I’m ready!
Much love, and more road equipment,
-Sam