One I Would Rather Not Write

Joe Lambert, a friend of mine from the Center for Digital Storytelling, recently wrote the following in the center’s summer newsletter:
A colleague of ours on Facebook … posted a link from the New York Times interactive feature on consumer debt. Although I recently read Kevin Phillips’ Bad Money, I still failed to wrap my mind around such an exhaustively complex house-of-cards. This interactive story really allows you to get a clear picture of how insane the US addiction to debt has become….and how far this country and many of its people have sunk.

What makes this story poignant to me is I find myself pondering the costs of indulgence these days. I recently found out that like 57 million other folks in the US, I meet the classification of pre-diabetic. Put simply, my body has borrowed more (in the form of fat and sugar) than it can handle, and it is going into a kind of shock as it tries to deal with its indebtedness. I have spent the last few months attempting to adjust, which is its own journey.

Obviously, many people are trapped in the desire of enjoying a pleasure today that they can’t afford, that they hope they can pay off in the future. While I am all for hope, unfortunately hope has a cousin, denial, and I am trying to find the balance between my aspirations and my actual resources. This seems critical at this stage, for me, and for the larger political culture in the United States.

How interesting that he should put it this way. Although I’ve lost over 40 pounds since this April and my diabetes is rapidly coming under control, I’ve had to face up to another problem that I would rather not address so openly. About the time my health fell apart, my mother’s health also worsened. Our youngest son went far away from Mom’s reach to China to study and we decided to build a dream house for retirement. I lost any sense of financial balance and managed to max out one of our credit cards and drain a cash reserve account, without George’s knowledge.

I’ve always been the one who could figure anything out financially. I insisted we save, even when it seemed impossible with two small children, a house payment, graduate tuition bills, and car payments. I worked extra jobs, did consulting, and made sure I could pay for the extras without putting a strain on our cash flow.

While I am all for hope, unfortunately hope has a cousin, denial, and I am trying to find the balance between my aspirations and my actual resources. Joe’s words again, but they couldn’t be more meaningful to me now. Denial came to a crashing halt when George opened a bank statement and I had to accept responsibility for the mess I had created. Thank God for pissed-off husbands. In finally exposing the problem, a weight was lifted off my shoulders and I found a way to work through the financial problem while I also work through the health problems. Denial is no longer as appetizing as it was a few months ago.

I have female friends who say frequently, “My mother says that a woman who would tell her age (her weight, her income, her story of sexual abuse, etc.) would tell anything.” I’m telling it all, because I can’t afford the cost of hiding behind it any more.

A colleague once told me that I had my own internal gyroscope and that my sense of balance made it so easy to work with me. I want that back and it’s no farther away than taking responsibility.

My jeans have come down three sizes in the last few weeks. My blood sugar is just slightly above normal, and, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I’ll close out the month with money in the bank. It won't stay there long; it's going back in our savings.

Another Friend of Bailey's

Somehow, my latest copy of Bailey White's Mama Makes Up Her Mind has disappeared. I've loaned it to someone and can't remember who. Somewhere, they are benefitting from the folded corners and post-its that mark my favorite stories, meaning most of the stories.

I read this book at least twice a year after I stumbled across Baily White on NPR. I knew I was hooked from the first sound of her voice, a true Southern Lady, the kind most transplants to the cities of the new South never really get to know. Her voice brought back childhood memories of live tigers in cages at Esso stations in tiny towns a hundred miles from nowhere and mountain people who would take in an entire family for the night when the car broke down in front of their house. I remembered fishing in a metal boat on the lake through an entire thunderstorm with my uncle who insisted it was the safest place to be and my father stopping to let us pick cotton just so we would know what hard work it was. I ached for a sweaty summer day, a cold glass of lemonade and bare feet.

I content myself with finding an isolated spot in the house and reading her stories out loud, laying on the drawl and the accent as heavy as I want. If I don't get it right the first time, I repeat it again and again until I feel like I've had a really good Sunday homecooked meal - two pieces of fried chicken, green beans cooked with bacon and the Southern obligatory spoonful of sugar, fresh sliced tomatoes from the garden, and a hot cobbler of whatever fruit is in season. And tea, lots of sweet tea. By the time I finish reading as many stories as I want to myself, I've laughed as much as if I sat around that Sunday dinner table with family and friends of assorted ages for at least a couple of hours.

I keep a mental list of people I would like to have lunch with and Bailey White is among the top ten. I want to talk about people who were educated by nature, who knew that being respected didn't mean having money, who could greet everyone in town by name, and never labeled their neighbors as anything more than "quirky".

I looked at my favorite online bookseller last night, only to find that Mama Makes Up Her Mind apparently is no longer in print so I ordered two new copies from resellers. I couldn't find anyone with a full case, but I would have ordered it, if I had.

Refresher Course

I recently decided that our two-year-old Labradoodles needed a refresher course in who is in charge. It's going really well; my husband and I have remembered that we are supposed to be in charge and it's only been four weeks.

It's funny how one tune-up can lead me to recognize the need for another. I thought last week that I needed a refresher on how to get the most and the best out of my day and decided to write myself some guidelines. It was actually fairly easy to get a manageable number of things I was honestly committed to. Now, I look at them every morning with my first cup of coffee, just to get my eyes and mind open.

Here's the first one:
I will make better choices for my physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial health.

I think I need to begin simply by focusing on these things as health issues. They affect how I feel and manage. Depending on what I chose to do, I either end up empowered or depleted of energy.

One thing I've realized about myself is that I really don't have a lot of fear in my life. I've always looked at real fear as a source of energy, there to make me pay more attention to the situation around me. Consequently, I've been able to be a risk taker in a very healthy, productive way. The negative consequences I have experienced are ones I identified and was willing to accept at the outset.

But, anxiety seems to be a different issue for me lately, causing me just to ignore the issue that promts it. Sitting here as I wrtie, I can feel the physical reaction it causes: slight headache, distraction, acid in my throat and stomach. Gavin De Becker's book The Gift of Fear helped me realize the difference between worry and real fear when it first came out. It looks like I have some rereading to do.

My goal for today: Face one source of my anxiety and make at least three steps, no matter how small, to deal with the underlying issue.

The Tatt2ed Lady

I said the experience of getting a tattoo was another story in itself. First of all, I arrived at an immaculate tattoo "place" because I am really too old to think of myself in a tattoo parlor. There were several women customers, but no men other than the two who worked there. They turned out to be Christian tattoo artists, something I didn't even know existed, and every visible space on their bodies was covered with ink.

Honestly, on a stack of Bibles, I was the only woman there who wasn't getting a man's name covered up. I made an immediate mental note not to put my husband's name on my body unless it was with a washable marker. He would understand.

I was also the oldest woman there, certainly the only one paying for her tattoo with her retirement income. That was comforting, as if I had considered carefully for half a century that the pros outweighed the cons and decided this would somehow actually make the world a better place.

Although I knew I wanted a tatto of a dogwood blossom, Gentleman #1 graciously showed me several albums of photos of their work. They had page after page of every image, word and phrase under the sun. I didn't really expect to see where they had put them on both male and female body parts, but it turned out to be a complete lesson in anatomy.

In fact, I've never seen so many images of Jesus, not even in the church where I grew up. Jesus with crosses, Jesus on crosses, Jesus with eagles, Jesus with roses, Jesus with swastikas, Jesus with American flags, Jesus with Confederate flags. I was surprised to turn a page to find a photo of a man's bare buttocks sporting a drawing of a buxom nude woman with a picture of Jesus' face on the opposite page. I couldn't help but wonder about Jesus' reaction when they inserted his picture in the acrylic page protector and closed the book for the first time. Was it heaven or a new period of temptation in the wilderness?

My turn came quickly enough and I met Gentleman #2 who would actually do my tattoo. Indeed, they were both gentlemen and I had a wonderful time talking and laughing with the two of them as the needle hummed against my leg. It wasn't painful and I was grateful that I had chosen my calf to be so adorned. My criteria were simple - it had to be in a place where I could see it, it had to be in a place with no cellulite, and it had to be in place where I could easily cover it if I was afraid to show it to my mother. That didn't leave me with many options.

As my tattoo was being completed, another young woman came into the front room. I caught snippets of her story about her family still treating her like a child and heard the words "independence" and "konji" a time or two. It all came together when Gentleman #1 declared loudly in a thick Southern drawl, "But, darling, your family can't read 'independence' if it's in Japanese!" Another mental note to myself - no text at all and no foreign languages.

I drove home $50 poorer but wiser for the experience. My husband laughed, my children were surprised that I actually went through with it, and our closest friends came by to marvel at my tattoo that night. I haven't regretted it and don't think I ever will. And, unlike tortilla chips, one is enough.

The Tattooed Lady

For years I've been ashamed, embarrassed, frustrated and angry about my inability to control my weight. I was aware of how cynical I had become about myself as I'd gotten older and I was exhausted from the effort it took to fuel those negative emotions. Like most obese people, my body image was so poor that I couldn't even think about having my picture made. I was always the one holding the camera.

Fortunately, three years ago I was referred to a wonderful endocrinologist who walked me through my medical history following thyroid cancer at age 21 and explained why I had reached this point. Finally I understood how the medical treatment I'd had for thirty years and my own choices had gotten me here.

I was instantly confronted with an entirely new image of my body. It wasn't my adversary, condemning me to declining health and increasing pain. Suddenly, it was the guardian that had shielded me from even more weight, more illness, and, thankfully, more cancer. It was the body I had been blessed with, not the body I had been condemned to. And, in that revelation, I came to a place where I could begin to accept "it" as me.

I decided to put an end to the war I'd had with myself and be grateful. For years I had toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo - I have no idea why. But, when the dogwoods bloomed last spring at the same time that new appreciation blossomed in my mind, I knew exactly what I was going to do.One of the nurses in my doctor's office had tattoos, so I asked her where she had gotten them. (I wasn't about to just go anywhere; the laws allowing tattoo artists in South Carolina were brand new and I wanted a medical "referral" for my body art.)

I emailed my closest friends and family to warn them of what I was about to do. OK, the truth is, I was breaking the news to my 79 year old mother. I knew what her reaction would be and I knew she was entitled to it. I remembered my reaction to our oldest son's tattoo at age 19. I'm certainly not proud of the way that I handled that, but at least HE acted like an adult.

My birthday is in April and dogwoods are always in bloom. Those of us lucky enough to be born in April are blessed to have nature celebrate our birthdays. Dogwoods in bloom are one of my favorite things, maybe my very favorite. I collected photos and drawings of dogwoods, anything I could find to create the art that I would wear the rest of my life. And, I was careful to select images of native Southern Appalachian white flowering dogwoods. No pink hybrids for me. I wanted to embrace the certainty that nature knows best, with dogwoods and with human beings.

The story of getting the tattoo can be told another day, but the experience alone was worth it. I've always believed you should try most things in life at least once and that day was just reaffirming enough.

My dogwood tattoo is just over 2 inches by 2 inches, in full color, on my right calf. I wanted where I could see it and be reminded to be thankful. Sometimes I forget it's there and am pleasantly surprised when I rediscover it. It feels like I've always had it and I've never worried about hiding it. I've tried to rediscover myself in the last year and open myself up to the opportunities around me.

Sometimes I think about adding a few more small images around my dogwood - a dragonfly to represent my husband, a Monarch butterfly for my migratory oldest son, a feisty hummingbird for my youngest. But I'm not going to do it. They don't need me to select their images for them. They'll do just fine choosing their own.