proud flesh

I received my first badge sometime during my elementary school years. I went through quite a growth spurt. At some point two large ridges of flesh appeared. Caramel colored fault lines along each shoulder where the skin yielded to the rate at which it was asked to grow.

In my senior year in high school, I lost my left ovary to a cyst the size of a lemon. It had wrapped around the fallopian tube and crushed it. I felt the pain a different points along the way. The most memorable was in the middle of a street market in Barbados during my senior class trip. My friends helped me back to our hotel room where I laid in bed until the pain went away. The next time it struck, I ended up in the hospital and in surgery. The doctor said she'd never seen a case of endometriosis that severe in someone so young. I've always prided myself on being an overachiever. Why stop in the classroom? I left the hospital one ovary short, a warning to get pregnant sooner than later, and a long purple gash running across my belly and three inches below its button.

Eight years later, that gash would be overlayed by a topographical map of flesh valleys, rivers, and ranges. I was pregnant with the only child I would be fortunate enough to carry. A baby boy whose every flip, flutter, and hiccup I can still remember. During a shopping trip with family, my little cousin Desi kept me company in the dressing room while I tried on maternity clothes. She stood there quietly sucking her thumb and tracing one particularly long mark along my side. Her small mahogany finger riding along my river bed.

I breast fed for one year. Every day I would bring an electric breast pump to work. It was the look and size of a classic workingman's tool box. On my lunch hour I would sit in the handicap stall in the women's bathroom to pump. I didn't have an office, so I'd dragged a chair into the stall and run an extension cord in as well. I sit, pump, and chat with the other women who'd come in and out. Now at age 40, I spend a fair amount of time looking at what's left of what was once a pair of majestic peaks that now appear to be the victims of tectonic plate shifting. And again with the river beds.

Yesterday, I turned on the television and an ad for Cindy Crawford's skin care line was on. How did she stay looking so young at age 41? She's only 41! I screamed back at the television! She is young! A few months ago I saw a commercial for Palmer's Cocoa Butter. Picture a young pregnant woman with her beautiful belly out for all to see. "Pregnancy, it's a beautiful thing", it begins, "but it can also leave ugly stretch marks." From beauty to shame in three seconds flat.

Jane Hirshfield writes in her poem "For What Binds Us":

And see how the flesh grows back

across a wound, with a great vehemence.

more strong

than the simple, untested surface before.

There's a name for it on horses

when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh

as all flesh

is proud of its wounds, wears them

as honors given out after battle

small triumphs pinned to the chest

I remember the first time I read the first half of that passage. It was in an Oprah magazine and I like it so much, I tore it out and tucked it away behind my jewelry box for safe keeping. For someday. That day has come.

I am tired of being to asked to diminish, reduce, erase, and minimize. Why would I want to hide the evidence of a life in which I have laughed, cried, birthed, and sustained. I have been damaged, bruised. I have stretched. I have been torn. I have been reborn a thousand times. Sometimes, it feels, in a single day.

Life marks us and those marks make us. They testify to our authenticity and I will not apply anything to this body that removes one once of its essensce, of its being but rather

a balm that recognizes, restores, and honors the beautifully broken, working vessel I am

its application a ritual that reminds me that I have been tested and still stand. Not unmarked, but bound together by a wondrous mosaic of skin light, dark, smooth, thick, scarred, raised, and wrinkled. A living fabric of scar tissue cords interwoven with muscle fiber, veins, and flesh knitted together by hope, desire, memory, will.

Proud flesh. It doesn't begin to cover it.

Refractology

I loved going to the eye doctor when I was a little girl. I really wanted to wear glasses. There seemed something interesting about a girl who wore glasses. Sometimes I would purposely read out the wrong letters during the chart test hoping that would be enough to fail the exam. The doctor's office had a special room for the frames. They were beautifully displayed in cases tall and wide. Laying on glass shelves with their matching cases. The models wearing the glasses in the pictures on the wall looked cooly back to me through their transition lenses. Oh what I wouldn't give to be a part of their world.

My most favorite part of the exam was the optical refractor. The doctor would pull the ultimate pair of glasses down in front of my face and the magic would begin. A flip and a click, then, can you see better with the left eye or the right eye? Flip, click. Better or worse? I loved it. Sometimes the letters ahead of me were fuzzy, and then in an instant, a little better, then better still.

Of course, it always ended the same way. The glass that had improved my vision for the better would always turn out to be my actual vision. Curses, foiled again. Then I would wait in the frame room while my mother squared up with the front desk, promising the frames I'd be back again for them next year.

I don't know what got me thinking about the optical refractor the other day. Refractology (I'm not sure this is a word, but I'm going with it for these purposes) may be a very effective strategy for dealing with life. Let me play this out as an example. The holidays are coming. As I look out to that reality, I feel anxious.

• There isn't enough money to buy the gifts I really want to buy for all the members of my family.


• I ALWAYS get some type of flu the week before, the week of, or the week after Christmas.


• I have gotten a 24-hour stomach virus every night of the Fallon's Christmas party for the last 3 years.


• I'm not sure it's fiscally responsible to close the business during the week between Christmas and the New Year even though the break is good for me

I could go own, but that's gives a sense of the issues at hand. Now I will approach it through my optical refractor,

• There isn't enough money to buy the gifts I really want to buy for all my family members.


• FLIP, CLICK: Maybe I shouldn't assume that all my family members actually want more things. CAN I SEE BETTER, OR WORSE?


• FLIP, CLICK: I'm really enjoying knitting. I could knit something for sister-in-law and my brother which I know they would really like. CAN I SEE BETTER, OR WORSE?


• FLIP, CLICK: My father doesn't care about things, but my mom really enjoys a thoughtful and creative gift. This will give me some wiggle room in the budget and gift ideas for them. CAN I SEE BETTER, OR WORSE?

Practicing refractology can be a meditative process. It can be a mindful process. It can pull me back to center and reconnect me to what is authentically true for me. Flip, click. I'm seeing more clearly by the moment.

Take Care of My Son for Me

I was talking to a client the other evening. She's just returned from a trip. The last thing she said to her boy before leaving was: "Take care of my son for me." These words have been ringing in my ears for the last several days.

Take care of my son. Powerful words indeed. My own son is 14 and has just started his freshman year in high school. Eighth grade was a nightmare. For him and for me. The boy I'd been raising for the last 12 years vanished overnight and left me with someone I hardly knew and certainly had no idea how to parent. We made it through,but I worry about the scars that may remain. I worry that my "you can do betters" and "you are better than this", sent a message that I didn't love him unless he became someone other than who he was in those moments. The constant reminder from his teachers that he "wasn't living up to his potential" didn't help either. In the end, I took a strategy of leaving in completely alone, lest I damage our relationship beyond repair.

I'll admit that at times, the motto that would best sum up my parenting style at it's lowest and most frustrated moments is: "After all I've done for you..." After all, this has been a very effective strategy. The fear and guilt that I might somehow disappoint my own parents kept me from keeping my toe from crossing the line on more than one occasion.

My therapist has been encouraging me to do things differently. Take the end of his eighth grade year as an example. Rather than asking every night if his homework is done, I just stopped asking and subbed in conversations about the latest school gossip, or XBOX talk. I had accepted the reality of the consequences of this strategy. For example, he may have to do summer school, teachers may think I'm an uninvolved parent, etc. But I'd decided that our relationship was the priority, so the consequences seemed worth the reward.

I ask my son to do things. I ask myself to do things for my son. I do a lot for my son. I do too much for my son. I've confused doing for loving. I'm constantly doing things because that's what good mothers do. Good mothers do. But by not doing everything for him, I can teach him how to take care of my son for me when I'm not there to do it for him. I do things because I want him to know that I love him. However, I do love him...fiercely, unconditionally, ruthlessly. So I will mother so that he be able to care for himself in that same fierce, unconditional, ruthless spirit.

And that will be a child to reckoned with.

40 was indeed Fabulous!

Celebrated my 40th birthday in a major way. The festivities started the Sunday before with Sangria, henna tatoos, and U2 at Gillette Stadium. It was the Girls' Night Out that I've always wanted, but never had as an adult. It seemed to be so much easier to pull that off when I was younger. But boy did we make up for lost time.  My actual birthday was wonderful as well. I got great gifts from the hubby and son. The husband brought home a giant sheet cake...yellow with chocolate frosting. YUM!! It donned on me later that this enormous cake would have been a great excuse to invite people over, but we 3 used it as an excuse to eat bigger pieces of cake. Hmmm...I may need to take a look at that some day. The bday celebration finale was dinner with my parents and good friend Andy at Ruths' Chris Steak House. Andy gave my the most beautiful vase. My parents gave me a fantastic knitting book that I started knitting out of today. Good times!

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