fortunes

Maggie and I went out to a Thai restaurant the other night to celebrate a family birthday. After the meal we got fortune cookies, and Maggie asked me to read hers:

Your sparkling eyes give a healing light to those you meet.

It often happens that when I am thinking something, Maggie will say it. This was one of those times.

"Grandma Carol should have that fortune!" she said, and as usual, Maggie's comment hit the nail right on the head.

My fortune turned out to be a piece of advice that my mom often gave to my brother and I:

Be straighforward and honest and success will be yours.

Tim sent me this

and tears were streaming down my face when I got to the end. I'm pretty sure he had the same reaction.

Skype me?

My friend Maureen, who lives in Dubai, sent me an email telling me that she found Tim in some Skype directory. This meant that Tim could supposedly make international phone calls on his computer for free. I of course assumed that she must have found information about a different Tim McGuire, certainly not my Tim, because I'd never even heard of such a thing! Well, she had the right Tim, so the big guy set my computer up to be able to use Skype, and this morning when I turned on my computer it just started ringing at me! I clicked on "answer call", and enjoyed the pleasure of hearing Maureen's crystal clear voice coming out of my computer! It was great. I took my computer down to the breakfast table and let the kids talk to Maureen while they ate their cheerios. They loved it.

Cannot wait to try it again!

depresso update

It's been a while since I've blogged about depression, which I see as a good sign! I've been on the new drug, Effexor, since 11-20-05, which means it's been in my system long enough to be working. Also phased out drug #1, fluoxetine, with 1/8 having been my last day after tapering for 2 weeks. I will see psych. M.D. #3 on Monday to discuss how things are going with this drug at my current dosage. I have to admit I've felt much different in the past when I've taken AD drugs. Much "better" I guess, in that I've felt beyond all past problems, strong as nails, like I could handle anything that life might throw at me. High? Perhaps hyperthymic even? But I've never considered that to be a problem.

This time, I'd say that I'm feeling just fine. I'm not flying high on life, and I'm not overwhelmed by it either. I'm just in that perfectly fine place in the middle, where life is not flawless and I don't expect it to be. Messes don't bother me as much, the irritating behaviors of others are less so, and I don't waste energy feeling disappointed about everything in me and around me.

The best sign that I am well is that I am actually feeling excited about things. I'm looking into a new career, teaching English and/or ESL. And Tim and I are talking about the possibility of an international adventure some time in the next few years. Back to Vienna, where my family lived when I was in high school? The kids could go to Austrian school for a couple of years and get really immersed in German!

Another aspect of life that I am feeling excited about is writing. I read a quote recently about the value of creating art out of love. What if I learn how to create images of people I have loved, like my mom and my great aunt Mary, so that I can remember and re-experience how beautiful they are? Also how complex and human they are. That would be a worthwhile endeavor, and something that could feed me on a deep level.

These are all good things, and I am excited about the possibilities.

already?

Maggie is only 6.5, but here was our conversation when she slipped into bed with me this morning.

Maggs: I wish I could get what I really wanted for Christmas.


Me: What did you really want?

Maggs: To be magic.

Me: What would you want to do with magic?

Maggs: I would make myself a prettier girl. I would change my nose.

Me: Really? What don't you like about your nose?

Maggs: (looking down) Too fat.

It scares me that she is already thinking this way! I didn't know what the hell to say, but I chose not to respond with a typical mom comment about how she is beautiful and her nose is perfect. I remember my mom saying things like that to me when I was a kid, and her words never seemed to make a dent in decisions I had already made about something. Instead I commiserated with Maggie, and told her a story about when I was 6 and what I didn't like about my own appearance. Then I said that now it doesn't matter to me and that I am happy with how I look. For the record, when I was six my ears were too big and my teeth were not white enough.

Later in the day I grabbed Maggie while we were on the couch, and kissed her nose over and over again.

"Your nose is perfect, and I will always think you are absolutely beautiful." Maggie beamed up at me and giggled, which made me think that my words did make an impression on her. This might not work when she is 12 or 16 or 22, but today it seems to have been at least a little bit effective.

Guess I can't help being the kind of mom who says things that sound trite or silly to a kid, but at least I know I will be telling the truth!

free advice

I just spent WAY too much time reading blogs of people I don't even know (thanks, Steve), so I'm ready to dish some free advice to anyone out there reading this. IF you are sitting hunched over your computer with bloodshot eyes and a wry neck, wondering where you should stumble-surf to next and not really caring what time it is:

This is no way to live! Your time is worth more than this. Please, PLEASE get up and go for a walk or read a book or talk to another human being or just go get some SLEEP! That's what I'm going to do.

Sweet dreams and a good night! Here's wishing us all a 100% full night's sleep.

snapshots from the 40s and 50s

When I was small I loved looking at old photos of my mom. I could spend hours poring over family albums with my grandma, asking questions about what our family was like before I was in it. My mom was a dark-haired, porcelain-skinned beauty, and I hoped to look like her some day. The old black and whites could not dim the light behind her eyes. She loved to play with her two brothers and their many cousins, who were too numerous to count. Sledding, building snow forts, screaming and laughing and snowball fights. My favorite photo was of Carol sitting with her brothers on the back of a hayrack during the summer of '45. She is smiling and laughing, looking impish and pleased with herself, with a spark of mischief in her eyes.

The pictures of her in adolescence were different. She was a shy, pudgy-faced girl who didn't like having a camera pointed at her. Plaid skirts, dark sweaters, forced smiles looking awkward and sad. Chipped front tooth from a playground accident when she was in 4th grade. Black frizzy hair pulled back in a barrette, eyes saying, "Please don't look at me". It was around this time that her mother entered her in a "Teen of the Week" contest at the city newspaper. My mom ended up winning the prize, and the paper ran a big photo of her in the Sunday edition. The lively spark was dulled, but not completely gone.

By 1958 the sparks were flying when my mom graduated from high school. She went directly into the local Catholic hospital’s nurse’s training program. The place was a sort of south Iowa boot camp for young women who wanted a life beyond the farm or the meat-packing plant. The school was run by curmudgeony old nuns, who were shameless about exploiting their source of free labor. In the pictures taken of Carol around this time, the spirited and fun-loving girl is back. She was proud to wear her nurse's cap with her white stockings, white shoes and white uniform dress. She was popular and happy and confident about her future. She was the first female in her family to graduate from high school, and the first person to take her education beyond it.

on that note...

I ran across this quote from Meta Commerse today, and it speaks to what I was touching on in my last post. I thought that the moms and daughters who read this blog might find something interesting in it. It also reminded me of my mom's relationship with her mother.

Mothers and daughters have a special dynamic. The base of its uniqueness is a generational struggle for self being desperately squeezed through the many misogynist messages of our culture. If the mother hates and is separated from herself on any level, how will she relate to her own daughter, flesh of her flesh and bone of her bones? IF, for whatever reason, the core of her femininity is wounded, what message will she relay to her daughter about femininity and the experience of becoming a woman?