Family, friends, heartache, new beginnings

2013 was a rough year for me, my mother (with whom I have no current relationship, nor desire to) being the basis for some really hard decisions I felt I was forced to make in my personal life.  As the holidays approached at the end of the year, I was reminded more and more of the fact that my family was no longer in my life – and I fell into a deep depression.  Not only was my immediate family directly affected, I know that many of my friends felt a distance from me because of the inner battle I was having with myself, for that I am truly sorry. 

Sometimes I think to myself…this never would have been a problem, if I hadn’t let people in.  The me of yesteryear rarely made good friends and starting in adulthood – held family at arm’s length; it was always easier that way; better to be able to pick up and leave at a moment’s notice – no regrets.  I don’t regret my current friendships, but I do regret closing people off and/or pushing people away.  I am sure I hurt people without intending to.  This is my escape mechanism.  This is what I do when I am afraid of getting hurt.  But I digress…

I had tried my best to keep in contact with my grandparents and family for the years since I had moved away.  I do have a heart.  I do love them.  Unfortunately the guilt about my relationship with my mother (or lack thereof) became too much to bear in 2013.  So, while I wanted ever so much for my grandparents (the people that had basically raised me as a child – gaining full custody of me at the end of Middle School) to know my husband and my children – I made the decision to step away from the family altogether.  I felt that it would be better not to have to make them choose between me and their daughter – that I was doing everyone a favor.  It was probably one of the worst decisions I have ever made.

On February 8, 2014 - I was home alone with the kids, sitting down to breakfast burritos when I got a call from my Uncle.  An Uncle I hadn’t heard from or spoken to in at least 10 years but for online communications here and there.  My heart dropped before I answered the phone.  I sat in shock – rolling my son’s burrito for him – as I learned that my healthy, active, strong, virile (not old enough for this to be happening) grandfather had suffered a stroke that morning.  The last conversation I had had with him had been to tell him I was stepping away from the family. 

He was dying and for all I knew he thought I walked away because I didn’t love him anymore.  My heart broke.  I have already lost one dad in my life (my biological dad passed when I was 12) and, while I knew and loved and had amazing memories of this one, I couldn’t bear to lose him without saying goodbye.  So I cancelled my week, booked a flight for that evening and went to his bedside in Florida – surrounded by family I had purposefully estranged from my life, saddened by the knowledge of what a mistake that had truly been.  He passed within about an hour of my arrival at the hospital – but I got to say goodbye, to tell him how I truly felt.  We all did.  No matter how dysfunctional or broken our family is/was/can be (isn’t everyone’s?), I know for a fact that my grandfather was loved.  He was surrounded by love when he passed.

I am glad I went.  I am glad I was able to help.  I am glad I reconnected with family.  Family is important, I have always known that.  I struggle daily with my inner demons and the memories of my past associated with my mother.  I struggle knowing that I didn’t push more, try harder, to make the situation in our family work better.  My kids should have known my grandpa – he was an amazing man.  He came from nothing and worked his ass off to be successful; he made miracles happen for his family.  He was the strongest person I have ever known and I miss him every single day.

This tragedy has taught me to reevaluate what is important in my life.  It has taught me to open my heart, even if I may get hurt; because happiness cannot be achieved when you close yourself off to the world.  My goal this year, even before my grandfather’s death, was to work on cultivating personal relationships/friendships.  I want to surround myself with people that want to be in my life.  I want to be uplifted, challenged and supported in my friendships/relationships.   The saying goes something like:  “you are the average of the 5 people closest to you in your life” – I want my average to be amazing.  I know that the people that love me are amazing and I look forward to growing old with them - laughing and sharing memories.

Cheers to you gramps!  May I be half the person you were and all of the person you told me I had the potential to become.   - Mimosa

The bear

It was just a dream.

I was in what I understood to be a vacation rental, a mobile home in a nicer park in a wooded setting somewhere in the mountains. The décor was cozy, Western, if a little worn. Behind the couch, a large window let in the view of the park and the trees. Beside the couch, a low wall bracketed three steps down to a storm door; the trailer had no solid door.  We were all together in the living room; Yves and Zach watching a movie on the portable player while Xavier and I napped. It was early in the evening when I woke up. I wasn’t sure why I woke up or what urgent feeling compelled me to open my eyes immediately, but I knew something was wrong.

It was the bear on my head.  The bear was the something wrong. A young bear, not fully grown, pawing at my hair as I dozed sitting on the floor, half-leaning against the wall. It climbed onto my shoulders and rested on my head.  No sudden moves, I thought, wondering what I would do and how I would get the bear off my head and safely away. Xavier had woken before me, I saw through tufts of bear fur, and was working on his laptop on the couch, just a few feet away.  “Xavier,” I whispered. “Xavier, please, I need help.  Xavier, there’s a bear on my head.”

Xavier did not look up.  He was intent on his work, a furrow in his brow as he continued tapping rapidly into the keyboard.

Yves looked up from his movie, though, and his eyes got wide when he saw the bear. He approached. “Mommy?  Mommy, why is there a bear on your head?”

“I don’t know, sweetie.  No, don’t come over here.  You should take Zach and go outside.  … No, wait, don’t go outside; there are more bears outside. Can you take Zach and go into the bedroom and close the door while I take care of the bear, please?”

Yves did. He looked at Xavier, but didn’t try to distract him. He picked up the movie, and Zach happily followed him down the darkened hallway to a bedroom. I heard the door click shut, and was relieved.

“Xavier.  Xavier, help, please, help. There’s a bear. On my head.  A big bear. I don’t know what kind of bear it is, but it’s big, and it’s heavy, and it’s a BEAR.  Xavier. Xavier, Xavier, look up, PLEASE, look UP!” I implored, as loudly as I dared. The bear shifted, a paw planted in my eye socket. It was hard to remain upright with so little support and the weight of an entire bear on my shoulders, but I feared what the bear might do if I moved too much.

Xavier’s eyes didn’t leave the screen. “There’s no actual bear in the house. Bears can’t get in the house.”

“There IS a bear. It’s on top of me. I need help getting it out of the house. Please.”

Xavier sighed. “There is NO BEAR HERE.”

I was devastated. All he had to do was to look up and he’d see me with a bear on my head. One shoulder against the wall, the other lost under drooping bear skin, my one eye peeking out, and completely at the mercy of the bear.

Eventually I had to try to move; I couldn’t remain still any longer. I shifted. The bear pressed harder into my face as I gently moved to a more upright position.  The bear didn’t like it, and nipped at my back. I felt his claws dig into my sides, but I kept tipping more and more, slowly moving him off balance. He decided to get down. Once he was off me, I rose up onto my knees and pressed gently on his rump.  He moved!  I scooted closer and pushed gently again, trying to move him toward the door. He didn’t like moving, and I had to push hard, and occasionally he would swipe back at me in annoyance. I’d retreat, look at Xavier again, not quite believing that he was failing to notice me push a recalcitrant bear across the room just a few feet away from him, but not daring to continue to speak as long as I was making progress.

Finally, I convinced the bear to turn toward the little stairs by the door. Three steps down. Now I could see how the bear had gotten in: a storm had tossed a sizable branch right into the storm door, and knocked the lower plexiglass panel right out of the frame. It lay upright wedged between the door and the trailer itself, still blocking part of the opening it was supposed to cover. The tree branch stuck rudely through the passage.  “You got in here through that little opening, bear; you can go back out again,” I muttered.  The bear didn’t want to go, but now I was pushing outright, not caring whether it annoyed him; he was wedged against the door and couldn’t easily reach around to swipe at me anymore.  Finally, he decided to squeeze through the opening and leave the trailer. Success!  I was relieved.

Xavier finally looked up. “What’s the matter?” he asked blandly.

Shaking, I answered, “There was a BEAR ON MY HEAD. It came in when we were sleeping. I just got rid of it. We need to fix the door so no more bears can get in.”

“There are no bears around here. Too many houses,” he replied.

“There are. Look out the window. See? There are bears.  One… two … three bears, out there. That one closest to us is the one that was IN THE HOUSE a minute ago.”

He looked from the bear to the doorframe and back to the door again.  “No way that thing was actually in here. Maybe it got close, maybe it tried, but there’s no way it actually got into the house.”

I sighed. I tried to move the tree branch that protruded into the house through the opening in the door; I couldn’t budge it. I squeezed outside (mindful of the bears!) and tried pulling the branch back the other way; no luck. I just wasn’t strong enough.  “Xavier, I need some help, please. We need to fix the door to keep the animals – and the bugs! – out of the house, and I can’t move this branch.”

Eventually, I was able to convince him to get up and actually look at the damage. Surprised, he agreed that we did need to fix it right away (finally!) and he was able to quickly move the tree branch and help me fix the door. With the door firmly closed and secure, I checked on the boys (safe and happy with their movie) and then sat down on the couch and looked out the window. Maybe the bear hadn’t been in the house?  No, no, he had been sitting on my head, just a little while ago, right here. Xavier might be the picture of normalcy and courtesy and been a good help with the door, but there really had been a bear. In the house. On my head. Well, maybe that’s not really a big deal.  I mean, the bear didn’t do any harm, did it? Just a couple of scratches, some pressure, but mostly I was afraid of it. It didn’t actually hurt me. I didn’t even know what kind of bear it was. Probably just a little brown bear. Maybe it was just a cub, even, more afraid of me than I of him.

“You doing okay? You seem kind of upset.”

“Well, yeah, I’m upset! I had a bear on my head and I couldn’t get you to help me!”

“I’m sorry you’re upset about the bears around, but I never saw any bears in the house. The opening in the door really isn’t big enough to let anything bad in.”

“It was a bear, on my head. I asked you for help and you wouldn’t listen to me.”

“I was working pretty hard on that email!  I can’t tell if what you’re saying is important or not when you talk in that quiet regular voice. It didn’t sound all that important. Why would I look up for that?  I could hear what you’re saying just fine; it just didn’t make any sense, because a live bear wouldn’t be in the house. I thought you were talking about a stuffed bear for Zach, so I finished my email while I could. Who even knows when they’ll give us a five minute break again anyway? And it had to get done. It seemed like the best possible thing I could do at the time. I’m SORRY if you wanted me to actually look up at you in that thirty-second window rather than do the work I need to do for all of us in the time I had to do it!”

Was he right? I was never sure, when we got into these conversations. I start out hurt, angry, upset because I think something is very wrong, but before long, he has it turned into something else entirely. He has eighteen different reasons that I should not be upset at all, that he’s a good guy and a good guy does the best he can in every single situation, and something unique about this situation might have been unexpectedly different, but you can’t account for those things and he deserves every benefit of the doubt. And doubts I have in plenty. I wavered.

As I considered my response, I looked outside. It was dusk; the bears at the edge of the woods were still walking in and out of sight. “My” bear was still nearest the home we occupied. I watched him. Not so threatening, necessarily?  He HAD been inside. He HAD scared me. He’s a bear! He hurt my shoulders, my face, my sides, my back. And he had had the potential to hurt my children, to hurt all of us. He’s a bear.  … Well, he didn’t ACT aggressive. Probably just a little brown bear looking for his mother.

Then he turned, and suddenly looked much larger. And clear as could be, there was the shoulder hump. That was no brown bear. That was a grizzly. A chill went down my spine; that grizzly had been in my house with me, and my children, and my husband had dismissed my concern as nonsense – if he had even really heard it at all. There was NO excuse for that.

“THAT GRIZZLY BEAR WAS IN THE HOUSE!”

“There’s no way that those bears are grizzly bears, honey, you know that. They are probably just little brown or black bears wandering around looking for berries. It’s that time of year.”

I stood up and pointed out the window. “It IS a grizzly bear. LOOK RIGHT THERE. THAT is the bear that was in the house. ON MY HEAD. THAT GRIZZLY BEAR WAS ON MY HEAD AND YOU WOULD NOT LISTEN TO ME AND YOU WOULD NOT HELP ME!”

Xavier couldn’t decide whether to be frightened or angry. I very rarely raised my voice with him, especially over something as life-and-death as bears in the house. He stood up tall, puffed his shoulders, and took a step just a little bit too close to me – one of his signature plausible-deniability intimidation moves. I still wouldn’t swear that he knows he’s doing it, but it’s awfully effective. “You KNOW I wouldn’t DELIBERATELY ignore you if you were here with a bear on your head! I would never do that on PURPOSE,” he began.  This, too, is a familiar line.

“NO.  No. No. No. I told you, you ignored me, you did not listen, you decided it was something else that makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER so you wouldn’t have to pay attention, and you let me sit here with a GRIZZLY BEAR ON MY HEAD while I saw the boys to safety – thankfully Yves is old enough to listen and did a good job getting them both out of the way!! – and I had to get a GRIZZLY BEAR moved across the living room and down the steps and out the door by myself! A GRIZZLY BEAR WAS ON MY HEAD!”

“I thought you were talking about a stuffed animal! You know I would never-“

I backed away a few steps.  “THE GRIZZLY BEAR WAS ON MY HEAD! I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU WOULD IGNORE ME WHEN I TELL YOU THERE IS A GRIZZLY BEAR ON MY HEAD! YOU HAVE TO HELP SOMEONE WITH A BEAR ON THEIR HEAD! THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR IGNORING SOMEONE WHO SAYS THEY HAVE A BEAR ON THEIR HEAD! NONE! EVER! EVER!”

“I can’t understand what you mean when you’re yelling like that; it doesn’t make any sense. I thought you were talking about a STUFFED ANIMAL. That’s not a big deal at all. Do you want to sit down and do something else now and maybe talk about it later?”

And still, I doubted. And I looked out the window, again. Grizzly bear was still hovering outside, not yet into the woods, just … standing there. And the anger did not let go. I was not wrong, I was not crazy, that was a real bear, and it HAD BEEN on my head. It really, really had. I did not imagine it, I did not make it up, and it really was a grizzly, and it really did hurt, and it really could have torn us all limb from limb, and I really managed to get rid of it myself. I’d had help with the door. I didn’t know what I’d have done to fix the door if I’d been alone, but the bear was real, horrible, and I never, ever, ever, ever wanted to repeat this experience.

“No. No. I am not talking about it later. I am never talking about it with you again. I am not talking about ANYTHING with you again. I never want to see you again. I’m done. I’m done. I’m done. Never, ever again.”

And then I woke up. I still felt the rush of adrenaline, the raw sense of rage, the shame of doubting that what I knew to be true was actually true, and of actually believing for a while that maybe it wasn’t as bad as all that even when that misbelief put my life and my children at deadly risk. I looked at Xavier, and knew that it’s not fair to be angry at someone over what they did in a dream – but every line in that dream was certainly ours. Everything said and done in that dream was true to character, eerily true. I know every line in the script by now, except for the last lines – I don’t make any final decisions, or say things with far-reaching consequences. In real life, I delay them until I’m “thinking more clearly” and can “weigh the facts”.  When something disturbing happens again, well, clearly I’m too disturbed at that point to make any other decisions then, either. I doubt myself. I’ve had very few actual grizzlies at a safe distance to eyeball for gauging truth against my feelings, and I’m easily convinced that things could not possibly be as bad as all THAT.  Surely there could not, in fact, have been an actual grizzly bear sitting on my head. And even if there had been, surely it isn’t unreasonable that I couldn’t get help for that; misunderstandings happen. And even then, a single horrible misunderstanding doesn’t have any more meaning than being a horrible misunderstanding. There are good things that I do get help with, after all, so clearly it is not so bad as I think.  Even this is a dream. A spooky dream, a dream ridiculously full of the symbolism so obvious it almost isn’t even symbolic anymore, but dreams – they aren’t real. Dreams are crazy, man. It’s really, really not that bad.

Except it was a grizzly bear on my head. A bear on my head. A bear, on     my      head.

I'm Surprised I Didn't Find A Dead Body, Quite Frankly

My only excuse is that all my attention has been on my two sons' issues - between the two of them they have ADHD, encopresis, ODD, anxiety, possible developmental and/or emotional delays, and who knows what else.  So can my neglect of the state of my daughters' (ages 12 and 8)bedroom possibly be forgiven?  After today, in total embarrassment and concern, I say... probably not.  It's really, really bad.

For the past several weeks (months?) I have been telling them to clean their room.  They share a pretty small one, and have loft beds.  I have been planning on what to get for them to organize their stuff with, so in their partial (very partial) defense, they don't have a LOT of storage or work space.  That said....

They have not cleaned their room.  They will go in to do so, and get distracted.  Every time, and with little to no care about being able to find their stuff, since they mostly play imaginative games in which they cover paper after paper with scripts, screenplays, menus, lists, drawings, etc.  Even when I've said "Just pick up your clothes", the job is wandered away from five minutes in.  And apparently, I've just discovered, they have enough clothes to do a load of laundry every few weeks and be fine. The clean clothes are left in the basket to be pawed through when a shirt is needed, and the dirty clothes are...everywhere else.

Last week, I walked into their room and flipped out on them.  Either they clean it, or they should be prepared to come  home one day to an empty room.  They rolled their eyes and slowly picked up a sock or two.  I left the room, and said no more, already planning my evil room-clearing deed.  I may have even chuckled a bit...

And sure enough, the room was not cleaned.  Oh no, it wasn't even touched.  If anything, the mess just got bigger.

The mess.  You want to see it?  Really?  Because it's awful.  Pictures don't even BEGIN to show how awful.  But they can give the smallest hint of the chaos...

Please keep in mind that this is only one view, and actually shows very little of the DEPTH of the mess.  Under all that? And in every other part of the room? Papers, drawings, little plastic toys, pens, markers, makeup, jewelry, TONS MORE PAPERS, books, toys, legos, pencils, pencils, pencils, art supplies, yarn, half-knitted projects, stickers, and tons more.

My original plan was to taken all their possessions that I knew they would actually want, and leave the clothes and trash for them to pick up to earn back the other stuff.  However, after taking out FOUR BINS COMPLETELY FULL of stuff I was planning on giving back, this is still what the room looked like:

Clearly, something else had to be done.  I wasn't sure they'd even NOTICE that anything had been removed!  So I took it further....  I cleaned it for them.  I piled all the clothes into a laundry hamper, and threw away the pile of trash.  Here is a picture of the pile of papers I ended up with AFTER removing ANYTHING worth either keeping or taking to Goodwill:

In their beds, I found bags of chocolate chips (almost empty) under stuffed animals.
I found three boxes full of dumdum wrappers.  ( I had bought a bag for my son's 6th birthday pinata, then hadn't done a pinata, so the bag of a few hundred dumdums was left forgotten)

  

I took everything out except: Clothes, books, beds, violin music, the keyboard, a couple of things on their dressers, their CD player (which they don't use at the moment, but I didn't feel like lugging it out), and furniture.  Taken was: all art supplies, dolls, blank books, journals, toys, other musical instruments, jewelry, makeup, dress up stuff, craft supplies, craft project both started and finished, art projects both started and finished, stuffed animals, dollhouse stuff, mementos, photos, barbies, EVERYTHING ELSE.

Here is what it looks like now:

I went through everything I took out, and already took about half of it to Goodwill.  The rest is in bins in the garage.  I haven't decided how I'm going to let them earn it back, or when.  All I know is it will NOT be fun for them, and this will NOT happen again. 

So there it is.  My colossal parental failure of the last few weeks.  I think I learned my lesson.  I hope they do.  

Now's where's my Vodka Cran?  I'm ready to relax....

Lemon Drop, M.D.

I'd Do It All Over Again!

My husband and I will have been married for 20 years in couple of months.  We had just started talking about how to celebrate this milestone when one of my joyful single friends invited us to one of his crazy meet-up events, called Brides of Seattle.  It sounded like a fun pub crawl, and was happening on a non-work weekend, but we couldn’t commit right away due to other scheduling questions.  So, we only decided to go about a week beforehand.  Three days before, the organizers announced that in honor of I-74 passing, there would be a “priest” available to marry any desiring couples.  On a whim, I asked if they did renewals.  

Two days prior, the “priest”, who has a valid internet license, said he’d be happy to perform a ceremony, and asked for a copy of our vows.  Vows?  Oh.  So, I threw the question out on Facebook, and asked a few friends, and took that copy to book club, leaving the draft behind for my husband to edit.  Because, you know, after 20 years, what you want to promise may have changed a bit.

Ordinarily, I would have wanted to invite everyone I know to my party.  However, this wasn’t my party, strictly speaking.  I did vaguebook about it, and mention it a few people.  But Save the Hour isn’t really in very many people’s repertoire these days.  And I had no idea exactly when the renewal would happen.  It could be after the mass marriage to Jimi Hendrix’s statue, or at any one of the clubs.  In hindsight, we should have done it at the engagement party.  Hindsight is always 20/20, isn’t it? 

 Anyway, I hied myself to Value Village, and picked out a dress I could afford, a curtain to make a veil and figured out the rest of the accessories.  I am, after all, the girl from 27 Dresses.  I know weddings. Hubby decided on his fur Burning Man Vest, and a cummerbund.  We got the vows off to the priest by noon, and I finished all the alterations by 4 on the day of the big event.  What could go wrong?

In the end: nothing.  We had a blast, met great people, and wandered Capitol Hill with fabulously dressed brides, bouquets, and attendants, carousing and celebrating all stages of love and luck with similar minded folk.  I took my polyamorous vows to Jimi with a throng of brides, and went joyfully off to the reception.  Getting Father Whiskey Dick and a congregation to a place where hearing was possible took some doing, but the end result was beautiful.  The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, some fellow party goers, and a few random passers-by witnessed our vows, in the shadow of Jimi Hendrix, who wore a festive poncho for the occasion.  I even got showered with glitter, which is so festive, even if it is MOOP. Somehow it seemed as fitting as anything we could have actually planned.

Here are our vows:



I promise to be patient
I will follow you into adventures and culinary peculiarities trusting that it will be okay. 
I will tolerate your farts with minimum commentary, and tell you nicely if you need a breath mint.
You will always be beautiful/handsome to me, for plumper or for thinner.
 I will make loving you a priority.
I promise to divide household chores based on who hates them most, even if that doesn’t always come out quite equally.  This includes bills and taxes.
I promise to talk, to ask, to answer, and to listen without interruption
I will tolerate your obsessions.
I will strive for a world where the night owl and the early bird can nest together in harmony
I will try to remember that having money is less important than not arguing about it.
When parenting, or in public, I will always present a united front, and discuss differences later
I promise to support you in your endeavors, your dreams, and your sorrows. I will believe in you.
There will always be coffee, laughter, and love.  Not necessarily in that order.
We will have conversations involving more than just logistics
I promise to be judiciously honest
I will not hold grudges, and will try to overlook faults
I will value compromise.
I will try not to bring the culture from work into our home life.



What was the best part of the renewal ceremony?  Committing to doing it, and talking about the vows.  We realized we really are still heading in the same direction, and laughing at the same things.  And that makes all the difference

Champagne, anyone?

This I Believe

Recently, a friend was asked to give a talk called “This I believe” at a Universal Unitarian Church.  He gave an excellent treatise on why he was an atheist, and how he found religion incompatible with scientist he is.

Being the good friend I am, I called him out on that.  Because, while defending atheism is something any atheist can understand, it isn’t actually a statement of belief, is it?  It’s more like explaining why you are planning to vote for one candidate instead of another, rather than what makes your political blood boil. 

Crash Davis gave an awesome speech about what he believed in during a memorable scene in Bull Durham.  All Annie could say in response was, “oh my”.  That’s what I’m talking about!  Only I don’t believe the hanging curve ball, and baseball bores me.  I just can’t sit still for 9 innings.  I can’t even make it to the 7^th inning stretch and I’m not terribly fond of hot dogs.    Obviously, I’m an UN-American, communist, atheist weirdo.

. 

But really, I find myself being challenged about my morality as an atheist more and more often.  How can one have any morals if one has no superior being?  From whence does one’s sense of right and wrong originate?    People want to give credit to my Christian upbringing, which seems to me as specious an argument as saying that two heterosexuals couldn’t possibly produce a homosexual.  I will gladly credit my parents for raising me well, but only in that they raised me with good human values. 

This leads me to what I do believe:  I believe that humans are more alike than we are dissimilar.  When discussing religions, this means that if you look closely at all the texts of all of the major (and probably minor, but I haven’t read those) theologies, you’ll find the same basic tenets.  Love your neighbor.  Treat people the way you would like to be treated.  Don’t murder, don’t steal, honor your commitments.   No one has a corner on these notions.  When discussing people in general, it means that we all want the same things:  a place to live, people to love, food to eat, satisfying work to do, beauty in our lives, fun.  I believe we are alike enough, that these desires are hard wired.  We don’t need a deity or an ancient text to tell us about how to interact.  We know.  We may not choose to behave rightly, but we know.

I believe in treating the earth well, for it is our home.  I believe in conserving resources, because waste is stupid, and needless.  I believe in joy.  I believe in doing the right thing, even when it’s hard.  I believe in volunteering, and in asking for help when you need it.  I believe in beauty, and art for their own sakes.  I believe in fun, and in good friends, and laughter.  I believe in good food. I believe in forgiveness. And I believe in the power of the human mind.

We have, within us, the ability to think, and to process not only what we have experienced, but what thousands who have gone before us have experienced, through books, and theater and art.  Through storytelling, we can utilize the experiences of our friends and neighbors.  By using science, we can deduce things, and set up experiments to help us figure out if this or that may be true.  We have the power to understand great things, not the least of which is each other, if only we choose to use it.  

For you see, I believe we have the power of choice.  We can be proper bastards, or we can be amazing souls.  We can also be blobs. We can help or hinder, or do nothing.  We can toddle on, fall back, charge forward, or even keep time in place.  We can learn from our mistakes, or blithely repeat them.   We can do each thing in turn, for we are not bound by yesterday’s choices.  And this is true whether you believe a deity controls your life or not.  Why else would Catholics need confession and Jews the day of Atonement?   Some people say they only choose to right because they fear Hellfire, or prison.  Perhaps, that motivation works for them.  I hope they find a place where they can choose to do right because the prospect of right is more intriguing, and has more intrinsic rewards than the opposite.  But many people don’t really do much of anything, do they?  And that’s okay too.  If you make the choice to be benign, if you find peace in being and nothingness, more power to you.  It’s still a choice, isn’t it?  

I believe in today.  As much as anything else, I believe in now.  Now is what we have; not tomorrow, not some afterlife, not even really yesterday, because memories shift and fade.  We have today.  I’m not good at waiting, and while I may save dessert until after dinner, I would never save it for next week.    Maybe it’s 30 years in a trauma center, maybe it’s that I became convinced at 13 that I would die by 35, and now at 51 am still marveling at each new day….  Whatever sent me down that path, Zen masters and wise souls have agreed with me:  Carpe Diem.  You may never get another chance.

I believe in growth, and change and yes, evolving.  I don’t have to believe in evolution, it just is.  But I do believe that it gets better, and we are a part of that process, an active part, if we will be.  Each day, each generation, each time we take a chance, we can make a step forward.  I’m not kidding myself about the waltz step process of reality, but the forward motion is there.  We can make our collective and individual ways around the dance floor. 

Because, the bottom line is: I believe in me.  I believe in you, and in my children, my friends, and the collective potential of humanity.  I do not believe that I, or anyone else needs a superior being to tap into that power, and that potential.  Do I have morality?  Yeah.  I have a credo, and standards by which I live.  I make my choices in hope and optimism, in a desire for all that is good.  I do not make them in fear of damnation, or dreams of Paradise. I make them for today, and in hope of a better tomorrow, here, right here, on this planet, in this now.