For My Devoted Sister

Brenda & Monet

Happy Friday! Today I'm the lucky recipient of a ride in the convertible of my devoted sister, of which I happen to have five! Whether your sister is a designer, mother or friend (or all three!), chances are, she’s deserving of good vibes this year.

Check out a few of our highly recommended adventures, along with the chance to see one of our awesome getaways! Stay tuned…

Throw yourself a party.

Here's How It Works

1. Gather 5-7 of your closest friends, and you’ll end up with a circle of trusted friends you can squeeze onto a patio.
2. Everyone: write your thing on an index card. The dream, the project, the plan, whatever. Get specific.*
3. Read it out loud to the patio. Watch friends raise their voices to share the many ways, big and small, they can help. You want to run that marathon? A hand will raise: I can offer childcare while you train. Another: I have a discount code for running shoes. Another: I’m training, too, if you need an accountability partner.
4. Exchange gifts. Say thank you.
5. Go forth and raise your hand for others.

Soon enough, you’ll have a room full of dreamers who have all-the-sudden become doers, with the help of nothing but Sharpies and each other.

It’s no small thing, sharing our big things. Asking for help. Saying it all out loud.
You’ll see.

Lately

It’s been work and hockey, hockey and work. There is a thin layer of ice smattering everything east of Home Depot. I’m uncharacteristically nonchalant over the chaos. You know I’ve always had a soft spot for good old-fashioned hockey.

At night, she plugs her nose when she does a pose for the photo. I laugh for days.

—

Me: Last week, I’d meant to book his flight to Chicago, but I forgot the team is doing it this year. I’ve done this before, and you’d think I’d have learned my lesson (Max traveled with his team to Minnesota and, beyond), but this has got to be the third time this year? I blame moving. My head is in the clouds, on my patients, anywhere but here.

—

He: Finally ready for a crazed travel season.

—

Me: Finally home.

Of Mint-Lemonade and Sisters

Well, it happened.

Monet wakes up early, I make coffee, she asks for farmers market time, I say sure, and while I usually know better, while I usually use this sun-streamed quiet hour wisely, while I usually listen to my sister while I cook/burn the eggs, while I usually live my life with my own thoughts, my own direction, my own path, my own prayers, I did something else instead.

I lost myself in the Internet.

I lost myself.

—

There was a guy on the screen. He lived in a new house in WVC and had such ingenious wit and wisdom to share on living joyfully, on simplifying, on living a soulful, sustainable life with a kid in tow, with a fully supportive boss who – of course, I’m assuming here – does not keep track of how many times he calls in sick for work, or with an emergency, or car trouble, or sick child, or parent needs, or the thought that we might actually need to someday! 

He made White Russian spritzers and homemade Pico and knows how to gracefully decline house guests.

He is perfect. His life is perfect.

—

I am no stranger to the comparison trap, not in the slightest. It’s a large portion of the reason I quit Facebook (well, there were many reasons there), and it’s a large portion of the reason I regulate my time in front of the screen. I’m prone to thinking everyone has it all figured out except for me, prone to thinking everyone has it all, period.

No one has it all.
I know this, I know this, I know this.
(Why do I not yet believe this?)

But on this quiet morning, as I sit braless with bedhead, it’s easy to see the guy with the white-russian spritzer in WVC (actually, currently in Jail – need I say more?!).

—

Do you want to know what I did after living with him for 4 months?

I bought cilantro at the grocery. I contemplated new bedding, linen of course. I secretly cursed Monet for not being an optimist like me, lamented the fact that Markus wants to save every single shred of artwork imaginable. I shamed myself for keeping so many boxes of photos, and then I fully convinced myself I could keep them, sure, but only if I hid them in newly-acquired under-the-bed-storage.

Do you want to know what I did not do?

I did not think.

—

I did not sit with my feelings of inadequacy long enough to realize they were not feelings of inadequacy at all. They were a recognition of someone else’s lies, someone else’s frauds, someone else’s fake. Look at him, killing it at this living stuff. He’s soaring! He’s happy!

And in my small mind, I twisted someone else’s happiness to mean there should be none left for me.

—

A simple scenario:

Man on the screen has cilantro. I like the guy on the screen; I like the way he lives. Do I need cilantro to like the way I live, too?

A simple truth:
No.

—

Monet doesn’t either. I don’t need the cilantro, the linen sheets, the under-the-bed-storage (OK, I might). But I needn’t shame myself when I think I do.

(It happens to the best of us.)

—

Anyway, I emailed myself, thanks to the sweet sister I have.

—

Hello!

This is wildly random, but I’m sending you an officially official fan letter to applaud you on the life you’re leading. I know that sounds strange, and I know applause is likely not what you’re after, but hey – we all need a blue ribbon moment every now and then, yes?

I know the life you lead is not without challenges, and I’m so impressed by your self-control, your wisdom, your grace. Thank you for sharing your life with the rest of us.

We’re learning from you, and growing with you, and that’s no small thing.
B.

—

And just like that, with a hit of the Send button, my own visions of perceived inadequacy vanished and, in its place, a deep respect for another human arrived.

—

I read once that, of all the feelings we must listen to, intuition is one of the most important. Intuition reveals what it is we want. Is it great care? A gentle spirit? The ability to gracefully decline a date?

Sit with it.
Learn from it.
Write about it.
Thank it.
Hit Send.

When You have A Terrible

Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

It began with the truck incident.

The parked car in the street, the U-haul in the driveway, a pick-up truck peeling out of the parking lot with less-than-desirable visibility. I blink, thinking of course I could clear the memories from my mind.

I could not.

I scrawl a statement on the police record, my contact information. My mom and Monet watch from their boxes – wide-eyed as I bend to pick up a shattered picture on the side of the bedroom.

It is not yet 2 pm.

I call the number on the brochure, speak with an advocate – apologize profusely when the security officer of the front desk calls back. I schedule an appointment. I shuttle boxes to the storage unit, stopping at the phone store for a new number, phone, email. A phone case from Monet for a week early birthday treat.

Back home, I fuss with my clothes and hit the alarm button to hear the distinct sound of a truck locked in the driveway below.

I unload the remaining belongings – the rest left unscathed – and after I put myself down for a late night nap, Monet and I find ourselves back on the driveway picking tiny pieces of my life from before.

What’s with today? she says.

—

Earlier, it was the heart necklace.

The diamond heart ripped from the chain as I open my eyes to look for the noise, the hurtful ping as it scatters across the room, the temporary panic as it skids toward the vent.

I crouch down, find the diamond, slip it with the spit off my face into a bag, tuck it in my top vanity drawer.

I’m sorry, I say to myself.

—

Earlier still, a miscommunication, a disagreement left unresolved, a looming decision, a fitful night of sleep. The morning-after feeling when you wake, remembering you’re ringless with a scratch down the side of your truck.

What’s with today? I say to no one at all.

—

I have been living at breakneck speed this month, rejiggering calendars to compensate for a sickness here, a last-minute decision there, both on the greiving and receiving end of each other’s mistakes, our own. In a misfired attempt to cope with the fullness, I pounded three daily miles on the treadmill only to develop a bad case of runner’s knee (oh, if only this were metaphorical).

I knew it was coming, the dropped bottom, although I anticipated far less shards.

It was a bad day, is all. It was one of many, smack dab in the middle of a lot of other people’s bad days, in the midst of a news cycle that spins wild, in the center of a hard collective.

And this is how I know to start paying attention. This is how I know it’s either going to change, or it isn’t.

—

I do not feel better yet, not really. My soul still feels a little knocked up, wrung out. Still underwater.

But in all of life’s strange-and-graceful meandering, isn’t this what it takes? A few shards to shatter the surface? Your own small, average mishaps swirling under a slew of larger ones to snap you into the realization that this is it? This is what happens?

Just, this – the everyday mess of life. The tiny moments that drive you insane from inconvenience into sheer gratitude for survival in no less than the time it takes to spit in a face. The dumb stuff that sends you jumping for joy then brings you to your knees, your fingers picking pieces of glass from your pictures.

A whole world, waiting for a whole new world.

—

The next thing, then.

A nap. A book. A text to the girlfriends. A short walk, a favor for the neighbor. Catching up with Markus. A phone call with my dad.  An emptying of a calendar square for Morgen, a filling for me. A water refill. A course correction of the largest degree.

And this, one of Max’s famous knock knock jokes:

—

Will you remember me in a year?
Yes.
Will you remember me in a month?
Yes.
Will you remember me in a week?
Yes.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
See? You forgot me already!

—

A whispered prayer that I don’t.

Do Not Lose Yourself

We do know each other, the two of us. 

This screen is not real life. Since we are ever so lucky enough to move beyond the pixels, I welcome it. (Head’s up: I’m a hugger.) And ever since we were little, my sister has not regarded me as a stranger, and take my words as such. Think of her as sanguine and spirited. Think of her as someone who exists beyond her thoughts and ideas, someone who is often-helping, always-learning. Think of her as me, today, a host of contradiction and chaos in a static, searching body.

Regard me as a simple, everyday human offering a small sliver of herself to a large chunk of humanity.

I promise to think of you the same.

Write It Down

After work today, I decided not to go home instead escaping with a purse, my phone and clothes on my back, not even toothpaste. I’d gone to talk with a social worker although talk is perhaps a reach to write. Yesterday morning, I woke to find spit in my face.

—

How do I find the time? The real question is a far simpler one:

Is it essential?

We find time for the essential, after all. We find time to brush our teeth, to shower, to feed the dogs, to feed ourselves. We find time to go to work, to go to sleep, to go to the grocery store for milk.

Some of us find the time for other things we deem essential: workouts, hair appointments, Sunday morning church.

And so, the question isn’t how we find the time.

It is why.

—

My only answer to this is that to blog, for me, is to breathe. It is to write it all down without expectation, unmeant for consumption. 

There is no how.

Sit down at your local coffee shop and type out a blog post. Make notes on the back of your son’s artwork, grocery lists, appointment reminders, nursing meeting agendas. Write long-winded cursive letters to your future self in a leather-bound journal on a rainy day. Leave yourself voice reminders while sautéing the onions. Call a friend for a walk around the neighborhood and exchange random thoughts about your lives, your perspectives – the truth as you see it today.

—

Listen, I know we’re busy.

I know we might have children, or aging parents, or needy dogs and grown-up responsibilities and a full-time job and you don’t understand, I’m already in an abusive relationship.

Write that down, too, if you’d like.

Say what it feels like to be drowning. Feel the shape of those words as they land on the page, or on another ear. Understand that this is your life – your gift.

Allow yourself five minutes to introduce yourself to it.

—

It will look ugly.

The truth often does. Our mirrors are all a little skewed, a lot cracked. You’ll be tempted to bust out the gorilla glue for repairs, to twist your words into lies that make you sound like less of a jerk at the end of the day. Write those down, too.

Maybe we’re all jerks at the end of the day.

Choose to be one of the honest ones.

—

So yes, blogging is essential. Writing is essential to me, and I think likely to you, and the how doesn't matter.

But the why does.

—

Here’s to the stories we live, and the stories we tell.
May they be one and the same.

(And may we wake to not find spit in our face.)