Stained

Another misdeed tucked under the rug. Another story about a leader misusing his power to abuse kids. Another stain that couldn't be cleaned, so instead of facing it and dealing with it, they covered it with furniture--dressers, bookcases, couches, something really heavy. Eventually though--as with everything--the furniture will move and the blemish will still be there, glaring back, waiting for acknowledgment, for someone to own it, to admit it and to be punished for making it.

That's what happened yesterday when the victims were validated, and Coach Sandusky was forced to face his crimes.

Unlike a stain, neither purchasing new carpet, nor employing the services of professional cleaners will do anything to clean the mess. Children who looked up to him as a role model were violated by the very person proposing to guide them. How can they ever look at the world through anything but distorted glass? How can they admire anyone else? How can they trust ever again?

I know nothing about the victims, but I do take a minimal amount of solace in the fact that we are built to regenerate. Like skin and bones, the scars remain, but the whole is capable of growing back stronger. The human spirit will once again be able to take new risks and see them play out justly, those individuals will eventually find a mentor who is honorable and wise, and in time, they will once again be able to trust those who reach out their hand and offer love.

These violations will have stained just a bit of their spirit, but now that the furniture has moved and the stain is visible, they can begin to heal. They can speak, they can deal, they can grow. It's just too bad we live in a world that put them in the position to have to.

Team Daylight Savings

My friend Annie’s “Team Daylight Savings” status happened to be the first Facebook post I saw today. I laughed at the allusion to the Twilight saga—Team Edward or Team Jacob—and then I scrolled through the rest of my home page, looking for links to interesting articles or videos.

Surprisingly, as I scrolled, I saw status after status berating Daylight Savings Time. Given everything else one could be angry about, the venting struck me very oddly. Never, in my wildest imagination, would I ever think an additional 60 minutes would incite parents whom I hear repeatedly complaining about a lack of time to accomplish the many additional tasks they now have as a result of bringing a child into the world. Nevertheless, friend after friend has posted attacks on daylight savings because those of us without kids get to sleep in an extra hour and they do not.

I don’t recall such an onslaught of bitterness last year, and I can’t fathom why so many people are so mad. Even if your precious little children bound out of bed at the same time they do every day, it seems reasonable that you could convince them to go to bed at their “regular bedtime” that night. I’m not a parent, so perhaps this is a silly concept; however, I recall my parents having a pretty strong authority when it came to turning in for the night.

If you’re concerned your toddler can read clocks, don’t change them until they fall asleep. Cover your cable boxes and keep them from your cell phones. Or, better yet, toss technology aside, take them to the park on this gorgeous day, and play with them, laugh with them, enjoy them for just a little bit longer so they are tired enough to actually fall asleep early. And then, even though you might have had to wait a little longer than the people without children, take solace in the fact that you will also get your extra hour. An extra hour that you, too, will be able to spend in the most fitting manner—tucked into bed, or ticking off a widening list of daily tasks.

The last I checked, time is the very resource none of us can buy, but all of us want. Instead of squandering it with bitterness, why not open your arms and embrace it? On one day a year, we get sixty extra minutes to spend as we choose. So even though my sinus infection is making me feel pretty crummy, these extra 60 minutes are making me feel thankful. I have a huge stack of papers to grade, and that extra hour of sleep cleared my head just enough to make grading them seem possible.

A Letter to My Nose

PROMPT: Close your eyes. Which body part jumps to your consciousness? Write that body part a letter.

***

Dear Nose,

We need to talk. Sometimes I feel like I care more about the relationship than you do, and your current behavior is driving me insane.

Despite my recent frustration, I want to point out the distinct effort I've made to pay attention to you over the years. I notice that fragrances make you twitch so I keep you from them. I coat you with unscented lotion in the morning and at night before bed, and I avoid close range perfume spritzes. I only choose candle flavors you like, filling my condo with vanilla and cinnamon because they are your favorite. And even though I love flowers, and find myself yearning to inhale their beauty, I know they bother you. For that reason, I can't remember the last time I bent down and actually smelled roses.

I know cold weather incites bouts of insanity, but I implore you to consider all of the things I have tried to do to appease you before you decide to continue with your current acts of vengeance. I don't punish your whiny outbursts with cheap, rugged tissue; I invest in you by emptying your baggage with aloe coated Kleenex. Though tempted, I never went through with piercing you. I saw so many enticing studs and imagined, on many occasions, how cute you might look with one imbedded into your cartilage. Nevertheless, I always refrained from prodding and poking you because I respected your right to peace. And even when I'm late, I always make time to netti pot you, to clean you out and to free you from gook that could build up and infect you.

Over the years, I've endured allergy shots on account of your temper-tantrums complete with twitching and dripping and pouting. I've spent ridiculous amounts of money on antihistamine and decongestant to try to calm you down, and I pour gallons of hot tea down my throat hoping the warmth might creep up into you and inspire you to relax your hold on my life.

I know I've never addressed any of this with you, so I'm hopeful this letter might encourage you to reconsider your behavior. I would really love to wake up tomorrow morning free from the chains of your control. I would love to wake up tomorrow morning as your partner, feeling fulfilled by your decision to befriend me, to work with me, and to negotiate with me. Hopefully you will feel this way too.

Thank you for your time,

Me.

Gather 'Round

In her commencement address to Rutger's University, Toni Morrison wrote:

"Although you don't have complete control of the story of your life, you can still create that story. Although you will never fully know or successfully manipulate all of the characters who surface or disrupt your plot, you can respect the ones you can't avoid by paying them close attention and doing them justice. The plot you choose may change or even elude you, but being your own story means you can control the theme. It also means you can invent the language to say how you mean in this world.

Well, it's true. I am myself a storyteller, and therefore, an optimist--a firm believer in the ethical bend of the human heart; a believer in the mind's appetite for truth and its disgust with fraud and selfishness. From my point of view, your life is already a miracle of chance waiting for you to shape its destiny. From my point of view, your life is already artful--waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art."

***

I'm not even sure where to begin with my response; nevertheless, I had one. It's Toni Morrison speaking after all, and who can really top her ability to craft wisdom with language?

I read her address yesterday in a teaching workshop, and I haven't been able to extract it from my mind; it won't step down off the tip of my thoughts. In fact, I have this deep yearning to chew every single word and spit it out into every moment of my life.

Stories interest me beyond anything else--beyond facts, beyond formulas, beyond theory. Stories are at the crux of what makes us tick as human beings. They've entertained, inspired and persuaded us for ages. We are who we are not because of what we've discovered, but because of how we've told the story of our discoveries--how's we passed on our learnings, realizations and truths.

And in each of us rests a bank of stories we've lived, stories we are meant to experience and stories that have preceded our place in the world. I believe stories can change the world because they are what change people. They are what move us to act, and they are what teach us to be good. In a world where more and more power seems to elude us daily, all we truly have are the stories we choose to tell. The stories we make each day when we wake up, and the stories we commit to each night when we fall asleep. We may not be able to control who bounds into our path, but we can certainly control how we respond, how we fight and how we walk forward.

The Silhouette in the Coffee Shop

PROMPT: Is there a stranger you encounter daily? Who is he/she?

***

Perched behind the entryway glass, chair propped against the wall, he sits there every single day. Leg bent at the knee, inner edge of his foot balanced on the top of his thigh, newspaper held in out-stretched arms, while a mug of coffee rests on the table beside him. Occasionally, the cup interests his fingers enough to warrant a tip to his lips. More often, it just stays there, a statue fixed in marble.

His silhouette catches my eye the moment I reach the last row of pigment diagonally streaking the parking lot asphalt. Even though I see him, I never look—at least not then. I purposely direct my gaze to the front doors, catching him only out of my periphery. Without looking though, I always notice him peering out the window.

When I reach the second entryway door, I question a turn to my left and wonder if I should meet his greeting with an acknowledgment, or continue to the counter and order my coffee. The neighborhood is a friendly one, after all. And this guy seems to survey each person who skirts through the door; he never directs his attention solely at me. When I do turn, I find his smile to be warm and friendly, not creepy and suggestive. And he has never once risen from his seat to make an unwelcome advance. He just sits there—a body bent on observing, sipping and greeting the bleary-eyed morning-goers who regularly seek solace in a cup of caffeine.

As I wait for my coffee, I always pass the time by reflecting on my turn—or lack thereof—wondering whether or not my culturally conditioned gut is unfairly questioning his intentions. Should ask him about his day or attempt to discuss a story peering from the front page of his newspaper? He could be lonely, after all, sitting in the coffee shop because he has nowhere else to be. Or he could be a recent retiree seeking pleasure in a morning routine. Or a writer seeking inspiration for his characters. I’m sure one of those possibilities is a bit closer to the truth than the suspicions coloring my imagination; nevertheless, every day the suspicions prevent me from asking.

When I open my situation to the broader context, it leads me to wonder how many experiences we miss trying to be safe, and on the other end of the spectrum, how many tragic moments could have been prevented if someone just took the care to listen to his gut. Mostly though, I wonder how we can strip out the factor of luck, and actually identify how to discern the difference.

Pistachio Toes

PROMPT: In her blog, my friend Betty wrote, "[w]e look at colors every day, and yet, we don't really see them." Where or how do you see color?

***

I jinxed myself yesterday.

"I haven't been sick all year," I bragged to my friend Caryl as we exchanged theories about developing immunity to germs--school germs, kid germs and baby germs.

Then I proceeded through the rest of my night in usual fashion, crawling into bed at 11:30, lying there, staring through my eyelids at the ceiling I knew hovered over me. An hour or so ticked past, while my mind wandered and twisted down whatever trails unfolded in my imagination, and occasionally, I retrieved my phone so I could enter reminders and send last minute emails.

At some point, the real world slipped away, returning again at 6 am with a blaring alarm. Slothfully spinning in the sheets, I flung my hand across my body to stop the auditory insanity erupting in my otherwise silent room. When I tried to open my eyes to see reminders, and emails, I discovered a crusting of goo sealed them nearly the whole way across. As awareness slowly seeped back, I also discovered a runny nose, a sore throat and a pounding headache.

Flopping onto the floor, I trudged to the bathroom and did what any sinus infection hater would--I netti potted.

The rooms were all dark, and despite the fact I generally wear black muted colors every day, I felt even darker than usual. Deep brown coffee puffed in my face, while khaki colored granola lumped on top of my yogurt--white yogurt abrasively peeking through through the flakes in an oddly satisfying way. I devoured my treasures, then moped into my room and decided to embrace color. Digging, delving, dredging through layers of black cotton, wool and polyester, I finally found pistachio colored socks--fuzzy, inviting and cheery, everything I failed to feel in that moment.

I gazed at them all day long, occasionally laughing at the absurdity of wearing a bright color I didn't repeat anywhere else in my outfit. Though they didn't sway my grayness for more than a moment, on a few occasions, they provoked a smile that would have never crept across my face.

It's funny that Betty wrote about color on a day when I subconsciously turned to it. When my allergy medicine, netti pot, coffee and warm shower could not do the trick, I ambled to my drawer and waged all of my chips on socks--bright, green pistachio colored socks, socks that warmed a bit more than just my toes.

The Little Things

In light of Kim Kardashian's divorce, I've heard a surge of comments about weddings. Despite the fact I've never actually seen her show, and know virtually nothing about her life, with my own wedding two weeks after they tied the knot, and our honeymoon to Italy shortly after theirs, I couldn't help but take interest in their recent announcement to split.

I still don't know the details, and to be honest, I don't really care. What I do care about is the fact that this divorce is adding to a long line of other divorces, divorces stemming from the essential problem that some people want to get married more than they want to be married. Some people fantasize so much about the dress, the ring, the cake and the attention, they forget the weight of their promises.

This has always seemed odd to me. For so long, I knew I would never settle. I would never marry someone unless certainty exploded like dynamite in my gut. For that reason, I questioned whether or not I would ever go through with a wedding, and I certainly never fantasized about one. When I met my current husband, I grew certain within a few weeks. Already in my thirties, I dated so many of the wrong guys, I knew when the right one arrived. I might not have been able to articulate exactly what I wanted, but I knew myself well enough to recognize him when he finally came along.

For that reason, my wedding experience was the exact opposite of Kim Kardashian's. My husband, our families and I worked our butts off trying to make our wedding as personal as it could possibly be. Details mattered not because we were trying to impress anyone, but because we wanted to give everyone a special glimpse of who we were, and what was most important to us.

We threw every single wedding tradition onto the table, and we only chose the ones that mattered to us. We didn't want to dress up and become anyone but ourselves, so every part of our wedding bled with who we were. Instead of holding our reception in ballroom like nearly every other wedding we've attended, we decided to have our reception in the winery where we got engaged. Instead of fancy flowers and chair covers, we lined the space with candles, and we converted photos into black and white, placed them in frames and decorated the entire place with pictures of our family and friends. Instead of arbitrarily choosing first dance songs, we picked songs that had significant meaning. Our "first song" was the song my husband played when he proposed, my "father-daughter" song started with a game of catch before we danced to Carly Simon's "Take Me Out To The Ball Game," and being the biggest fans of Neil Diamond I have ever met, the "mother-son" song was "Song Sung Blue."

The only reason why it was sad to see our wedding end was because it was the last time all of those people would ever be together in the same room. We will see some here, and others there, but never again would they all fly to Columbus, Ohio, at the exact same time. As our eyes scanned the room, absorbing every face, every smile, every laugh, we felt overwhelmed with love. Don't get me wrong, part of us did feel sad for the night to end, but a bigger part us felt eager to walk forward--to spend our first night together as husband and wife, to traverse the canals in Venice and stumble down the streets of Florence, to set up our goals and our plans, to rearrange our tiny condo, to dream about a house and kids and a future--and then to actualize those dreams moment by moment.

Though I've enjoyed opening gifts, looking at pictures, watching the video of late night dancing, and recalling funny wedding stories, I haven't felt wistful at all--I'm perfectly happy where I am right now. I'm perfectly happy with all of the little things. I'm perfectly happy having a teammate, a rock and a pillow. I'm perfectly happy in a t-shirt and jeans, giggling over a cheap glass of wine. I don't need the fancy dress, or manicured nails or everyone treating me like a princess; I just need him.