Stool Pigeon

                My new boss confronted me the other day and asked if the rumors were true. Is my house on the market and do I plan on moving? Considering that I was expecting, if anything, a question about scheduling or some other banal workplace topic, I was a little taken aback. Now, I’m not entirely stupid. When you A) have a public blog in which personal life is posted, B) post links to hopeful apartments on your Facebook page where your coworkers can see them and, most damningly, C) say to your coworkers “I’m selling my house and moving to Cincinnati to, hopefully, get a business degree,” people you did not intend to find out certain information sometimes discover it nonetheless. I get it. I understand.

                My question, though, is “Why?” Why was this brought up? Why did the person that “tattled” (because, let’s be honest, we can place money on C even if we don’t know for sure who ratted) feel the need to rat about something that, ultimately, has so little to do with the company? It’s not like I am in charge of anything major or had applied for anything. What conversation transpired that this occurred? And why, dear boss, did you feel the need to clarify it with me? Would it change a damn thing? Nope. Because, again, I’m not in charge nor am I applying for anything. And, while we’re asking questions, why the hell would you bring this sort of question up to me in front of an office full of people?

                So, once I regained a little composure, I replied “I’ll give you plenty of notice should I ever leave.” Next time, I think I’ll just leave one of the house’s brochures and encourage him to take a look at it.

                If you need any clarification or just want something for my boss to highlight should this ever be brought up again, here it is:

                I never intended to stay in North Carolina when I moved here from Washington. This has always been temporary. I don’t know exactly how long I’m going to be here but my home is on the market and as soon as we get a solid buyer, my folks are going to buy a house in Northern Kentucky. I’m going to travel with them up there and get a home in Cincinnati, Ohio. Then, I’m going to go to school and, hopefully, start work towards a business degree. I plan on transferring to the Cincinnati Whole Foods and staying on with them in some capacity during school and either rising through the ranks to corporate or starting my own business after I get my degree. My favorite color is blue and Southern culture confuses the fuck out of me.

                There! Happy?

Coup De Grace

                On the way home from work this evening, I passed a rabbit sitting in the middle of the road. I thought it weird that the rabbit was there so I turned around, went back, and turned my hazard lights on. When it didn’t run away, I knew that the poor thing was injured. My first thought was to gather it up and take it to a vet. Then, I saw the little pool of blood under it and knew that it was going to die. My heart ached for it. I had two options presented before me. The rabbit was going to die tonight either way. I could take an active part in the animal’s death and deliver the coup de grace or I could drive on and let nature take its course.

                As a Pagan devoted to  Epona, I’ve always felt a strong kinship with horses (obviously) and rabbits. Epona, in addition to guiding the sole in the afterlife and influencing our dreams, is a fertility goddess and rabbits are often seen as symbols of fertility.

In addition, my father, on occasion, would call me Boudica as a teenager. Boudica was a Queen of the Iceni people (now modern Norfolk, England). She was a strong, intelligent redhead that waged war against the Romans when her daughters were raped by them. It is said that the Warrior Queen released a rabbit onto the battle field as an offering to the gods before the battle and won. She, it is also said, had a rabbit as a guide during a vision.

I’ve always considered seeing a rabbit the sign of a good day and have always wanted one as a pet. Because of the religious association, I simply won’t eat rabbit outside of ceremony and, honestly, would feel very sick if I had to in ceremony. So, you see, as silly as it may seem to you, I simply could not just let this animal suffer. I, also, did not think I had it in me to kill any animal, especially a rabbit.

I cried over this decision. I simply didn’t know what to do. Then, the rabbit looked me straight in the eye and I felt my Goddess push me to end the animal’s suffering. I got in my car, drove a short way, turned, and aimed directly for the creature, praying that I wouldn’t miss lest I have to turn around and make a second attempt. My front tire hit with a definite thud and bile rose in my throat. As soon as I parked my car in front of my house, I cried for the rabbit’s soul and wished it safe journeys on its way.

I feel so sad for the animal. Now, I know that I went that particular route home because Epona knew that animal needed my help. It was a challenge, one I hope not to be presented with again, but I think I acted well on her behalf. I hope I shortened the rabbit’s suffering even a little bit. I hope that, in those final moments, in whatever capacity it could, it felt my sorrow for its pain.

Mushrikeen

                The Muslims have a term for non-believers. No, it’s not “Filthy White Infidel” although that might be some people’s translation. No, the word is “Mushrikeen” or “Mushrik” if you’re thinking singularly. I know this because I’m reading an English translation of the Qur’an. It’s my goal to make it through the Qur’an, Bible, and Torah in hopes of gaining a better perspective on the three major religions of our time. To avoid long, uncomfortable conversations with my Dad (who is an Elder in his Presbyterian church), I probably won’t even start the Bible until I move out.

                Although I’ve been reading this book for about a week now, I’m just now actually getting to the actual Qur’an. The first 120 pages are a history of their Prophet Mohammad. It’s, honestly, a little bit of a hard read because it was written by an Islamic religious scholar who was a little heavy on the religion but not so much the scholarly side. I’d really like to learn more about Mohammad because, in theory, he was a real person. I’m not sure but, I think that the case for Mohammad’s existence is a bit stronger than that of Jesus’s. Of course, this one fact wouldn’t give Islam any more validity in my mind than video of Jonestown makes me think Jim Jones was the Messiah or whatever he thought Kool-Aid and guns made him.

                Anyway, I’ve finally gotten to the actual book but I’ve got a sort of sick feeling in my gut. I get this way with most Judo-Christo-Islamic situations because there seems to be such a heavy focus on ridding the world of Pagans. Whether through breeding (were a Pagan to father a child with a Jew, that child would be Jew), conversion, or slaughter, they all seem to have an unhealthy focus on getting Pagans the F*** out of here. As a Pagan, I find this a bit unnerving. Nobody likes the idea that major religions have spent several hundreds or thousands of years trying to get rid a particular group- least of all, whatever group that may be.

                Look, not to get all crazy about it, but the history of Pagan polytheistic religions predate monotheistic religions by tens of thousands of years. I think we’ve got a right to be here. I’m not saying everyone needs to abandon their ways of thinking and come back to the folds of Mother Earth and Father Sky (Honestly, we don’t want you. Do you think we want our religion to be spoiled the way you’ve spoiled your own [see below]?), but I’d like to read a little more “this is what we believe and if you don’t, that’s cool, too” and a little less, “death to the infidels”, “thou shall not suffer a witch to live,” etc., etc.

                In addition to that particular theme, in the beginning of the Qur’an, it says that Allah gave people Moses and the Torah to bring people to him. Then, he gave people Jesus and the Gospels. But people (we Pagans) did not believe so Allah sent the Prophet Mohammad to confirm the Torah and Gospels and give us the Qur’an as well. 2:[87-90] Okay, right there people! One God, one message spread across three books. Why the fuck are you guys so Hell bent on killing each other? You know, killing Pagans suddenly makes a lot more sense than killing each other. It’s like saying “You’re dead to me because you say tomāto and I say tomăto!” It’s the same damn fruit, people! At least when you say that we Pagans are the bad folk, it’s more like “You’re dead to me because I say ‘tomato’ and you say ‘garden.’”

                I don’t think I’ll ever be turning my back on the Pagan Gods. Comparing polytheistic beliefs to monotheistic ones, I think that polytheism still makes way more sense. The idea that we are looked over by several different Gods and Goddesses that specialize in different things, have different views, and different temperaments just seems way more logical (if logic can be applied to religious and spiritual views at all) to me than this concept of a singular creator who destroys, kills, nourishes, and brings life to everyone so we can kill each other over how to correctly worship him.

                But, because it’s important to attempt to understand, I’ll keep reading, and I’ll keep questioning. 

My Grandmother's Cookies

I wrote this a long while back and keep telling myself I ought to publish it somewhere. I guess here will do for now.  

____________________

          I never met my maternal grandmother. She passed on long before I was born, leaving in her wake a devastated child that spoke of her so rarely I did not even know she existed until my adolescence. That was when the depression that enveloped and eventually took my grandmother’s life reared its ugly head and threatened to take mine as well. It was a simple, shocking story in which Mom revealed that the woman I knew as Grandma was actually my grandfather’s second wife. Her eyes bloodshot with fear and sadness at the discovery that I wanted to die, my mother said simply, “The first time my mother tried to kill herself she took a bunch of pills. I was so scared seeing her wheeled out of our house on that stretcher. The second time she took my father’s gun from his nightstand and killed herself. My father was accused of her murder despite the coroner ruling it a suicide. I’ve not spoken to her side of the family since.”

            In the fifteen since that revelation, I’ve never had the nerve to ask my mother about my grandmother. Her entry on the family tree my father made for all of his children leaves her entry blank save for the name “Gladys Petitt.” I’ve pieced together bits and fragments of her over the years through simple statements. Her middle name was Marie and my mom regrets not giving me that middle name. She let her daughter play in a patch of lily of the valley that grew in their yard each spring— both her and my mother’s favorite flower. Her family was of farming stock from northern Ohio. She had a dachshund. Her favorite Christmas carol was “What Child is This” and the song makes my mother cry each time they sing it in church.

In the only picture I’ve ever see of her, she’s sitting on a spot of freshly shorn grass, dressed in a crisp skirt and matching cardigan with perfectly coiffed hair that frames her features in large dark curls. Her long legs are stretched out in front of her. In her arms she holds my mother. She wears the beautiful smile of a mother very much in love with her daughter. My mother keeps this picture hidden in a jewelry box in her bottom dresser drawer. She claims my grandmother would be “positively tickled” by me.

            There is one story about my grandmother I remember my mother telling me over and over. Every year as Mom mixed the flour, sugar, eggs, and other ingredients for Christmas cookies, her eyes would take on a glassy stare. Her voice became high, quick, and halted, fighting back tears. She would relay her favorite childhood memory.

            In the chilled weeks before Christmas, my mother walked home from school. I imagine the clip of her Mary Janes on cold cement and her breath hanging in the air as she saunters along a street lined with tall oaks and craftsman style homes. It’s only when she sees the steam in the kitchen windows— a sure sign her mother has been baking— that she picks up her pace. In a swift moment she scurries up the wooden steps and burst into the kitchen which smells of toasted nuts, butter, and sugar. Chaotic piles of cookies cover the kitchen counters. There are sugar cookies decorated with colorful sprinkles, pecan balls dusted in snowy white powdered sugar, almond cookies shaped like crescent moons, and my mother’s favorite cookie of all: black walnut slices. Her mother— forever frozen in my mind as the woman on the grass with her daughter— turns from removing the last of the cookies from a baking sheet and smiles at her daughter. Mom gives her the sort of heart warming hug that children specialize in, sits at the kitchen table, and eagerly awaits a tall glass of fresh milk dropped off that morning by the milkman. It’s placed in front of her along with two perfect black walnut cookies and my grandmother removes her apron before taking a spot across from her. With her chin resting between two fists, she listens to her daughter recount the stories of the day, be they good or bad, and eats her treat with gusto.

            The Christmas before my eighteenth birthday, my mom wrote down all of her favorite recipes for me and put then in a cherry wood box with a note that reads:

Dear Heather,

It is with love that I copy these recipes for you and add a bit of family history. May you always enjoy the kitchen. It is a great place to relax and just think. It’s also a good place to prepare a bit of ‘love’ for friends and family as you put together their favorite recipes.

All my love,

Mom

Christmas 1998

            That spring I moved out on my own and away from Mom’s Christmas cookie baking. My grandmother’s story, however, lives on at the beginning of the recipe for black walnut cookies. When I seek out the black walnuts, mix the sugar, eggs, nuts and other ingredients I think of my grandmother in the kitchen, telling her daughter with simple actions that she will always love her. I may never know as much as I’d like to about my grandmother but through these humble cookies, and my mother’s softly spoken words, she will always be one of the most loved people in my life.

Anatomy of a Miscarriage

                It starts with the cramping, the blood, the sickening feeling of contractions come far too soon for your baby to be brought into this world. Whether spontaneously or with due warning, your whole heart screams with agony at the knowledge that this child you’ve been carrying is no longer with you. Sometimes, you’re able to hold the fetus in your hands. Sometimes, it’s so small, you can hold the little thing in the palm of one hand and have plenty of room to spare. Other times, it’s almost the size of a full term infant. If only it would open its little rosebud mouth and let out that cry. But that wailing in your soul is ringing in your ears, echoing off the walls.

                You mourn. You cry for the lost child, for the lost of hopes and fears that envelop every day of parenthood. You have crazy, heart wracking dreams that cause you to sweat your sheets. Watching a diaper commercial or seeing a mother pick out formula in the grocery store causes you to break down and lash out at the ones that have what you don’t. If you’re really unlucky, irrational thoughts enter your head. The little worm digs around in your brain: I want to die so that I can follow my child and make sure she is okay. I’m her Mom and it’s my duty.

                Everyone that knows, tries to offer some sort of consolation. They tell you it wasn’t meant to be.  They say stupid things if you were very early on in your pregnancy like “At least you weren’t further along.” No matter how far along it is, everyone repeats “You can try again,” “Are you going to adopt?” or “It’s God’s plan.” They look at you like you’re a stranger. Yesterday, your friend would have hugged you. Today, she’s biting her lip and shuffling her feet like a toddler, uncomfortable with the burden of grief. If you have any pregnant ones, for a while some of them might avoid you as if your miscarriage is contagious. You are a leper in their eyes. The ones that have suffered as you do, know what to say and do. They stand by you and hold your hand. They say they love you and ask for nothing in return. This is actually good. This shows you who your friends are.

                After a time, you are expected to move on. You go back to work. You suffer through the first few really uncomfortable dinners with people who have continued living while you’ve been shrouded in mourning. They laugh lightly about silly little things you’d once have found amusing, too, until the observant one notices that your lips twitch with every smile that never reaches your eyes. Oh, and then that person has to ask how you are really doing.

                I feel like a failure. I lost my little baby and she visits me every night in my dreams and I just want to cry and scream and punch the walls. I want to beat my husband for not understanding what it’s like to not be a mother-to-be any longer. I saw a child that looks the way I imagine my baby to look had she turned three and I spent fifteen minutes attempting to control my breathing so that I wouldn’t have a complete meltdown downtown.  I tried to return that layette I bought but can’t bring myself to touch the bag it came in. My baby is dead!

                Twitch. Smile. Take a drink or two of the wine. Smile just a little too wide now. You’re overcompensating on your expression in hopes that it will help to deflect attention from the madness swelling inside. “I’m fine.” This happens often enough and you start believing it. You’ll even have a genuine laugh again.

                Then, someone will announce their pregnancy. Depending on how strong you are and how well you’re coping, you might be able to hold back the tears until you get home. Maybe you’ll hold them back for the whole evening, into the week, or well into your friend’s second trimester. No matter, though. Those tears will come. You’ll spend a day wallowing in self pity and crying for your baby once again. It’s okay to skip out on baby showers and first birthday parties for a good, long while.

In time, the people around you will give birth. You’ll be forced to go into the baby section of Target and pick out something for the new arrival. You’ll manage just fine. You’ll coo over the miniature dresses and pint sized sleepers. You might feel a little melancholy but you’ll be able to make it through. You’ll go to the hospital, hug your friend, and hold that baby. You’ll feel positively happy for your friends. A tiny voice is going to ask if your baby would have been this wrinkled or bald or ruddy.

One night, you’ll tell your husband you want to start trying again. He is going to baulk. You’ll fight over it. He’ll tell you how horrible it was watching you suffer, how terrified he is that this is going to happen again, how he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stand it if you get so low, so dark again. You will argue. You’ll go to bed angry and feeling more hollow than ever. Hot tears are going to soak your pillow again. Where is the man that vowed to stand by you through everything?

You will bring it up again and again and again. The arguing will continue in this wretchedly circular fashion of wants and fears. A cold and lonely distance will isolate you from your spouse. He’ll withdraw into himself. You’ll continue that pressing crusade for motherhood until you wear him down or he comes around. He’ll stumble upon you sitting alone on your bed one day, crying bitter tears over this path your life has taken. When he asks what’s bothering you, you’ll have the good sense to leave the sarcasm aside, lay all your cards out and pray for the best.

If luck has abandoned you, you’re getting a divorce. If, however, she’s shined her light upon you, you’ll agree to give this whole parenthood bit one more stab. You’ll read every article you can on getting pregnant. You’ll eat your leafy greens. You’ll time your sex. You’ll lie on your bed with a baby name book on your chest, your buttocks resting on three stacked pillows and your feet propped on the headboard. If you could, you’d study for the pregnancy tests that follow at weekly intervals.

Every negative is going to haunt you. Will you ever get pregnant again? Why is it taking so long this time? Is there something wrong with you that’s making it so you can’t get pregnant again? Is that what caused the miscarriage in the first place? Did the miscarriage cause this?

Then, there will be that one night when you let your guard down. You drink a little too much wine. You have sex on the wrong night and, for the first time since before the miscarriage, it actually feels good. Instead of spending the evening attempting to funnel as much semen towards your womb as possible, you fall asleep in his arms with a slick mess dirtying your thighs.

When you wake up, you are pregnant again. Of course, you don’t know right away. You’re back to doing your math, contorting the tilt of your pelvis, and wondering if you’re doing it right. It’s a full two weeks or more before you take a test and get that little positive sign. Congratulations.

This pregnancy isn’t like the first one, though. You don’t run out and buy a shopping cart full of gender neutral items this time. You’ve been bitten and now you’re shy. Even when the doctor confirms it, you still step gingerly. It’s harder to grow attached to this one like you did with her. You count down the days until your first trimester is over. Even then, you only gently prod at the prospects of motherhood. There is still so much that could go wrong.

When your doctor checks for a heartbeat, you hold your breath every time until you hear the comfortingly swift rhythm you’ve committed to precious memory. And those tears will flow hot and heavy if, for even a moment, it’s a bit difficult to find. The ultrasounds fill you with conflicted excitement and fear and if you ever go a day without feeling a kick or flutter, your nerves fray just a bit.

The pain of childbirth is easy compared to what you’ve been through. Seventeen, twenty, thirty six hours of labor are like a walk in the park compared to the months you’ve been through. Finally, after all the pushing and screaming and tears, this wrinkled, bald, ruddy baby is placed on your chest. It looks at you with the most beautiful face you’ve ever seen and lets out a cry that fills your heart with something new that wells up inside of you, bursting forth in loud gushes and sobs. You cry right along with your baby as your husband holds his new family close.

I wish I could tell you that the worry you first felt when you found out you were pregnant with your son ends or that the pain over your miscarriage disappears. It doesn’t. Whether you think about it or not, your miscarriage has left its mark on your child. No child is going to be more special, more loved, nor more fragile than the one that followed your miscarriage. He is the one you fought for, cried for, begged and pleaded and bargained with the Gods for. The ghost of his lost sister will always hang over him, growing fainter and fainter as he grows up but will never quite disappear.

Rebirth

                Since my divorce, I have cried many times. I have cried for Olympia, the only town I’ve ever felt at home in. I’ve cried for the loss of independence that came with moving in with my parents. The prospects of being a single mom, the friends I’ve left, and being “stuck” (for lack of a better term) in North Carolina have all brought tears streaming forth from my eyes. But I have never cried for my ex. For most people, this wouldn’t come as a surprise. I’ve not made a secret about how screwed up our relationship was in the end.

                I won’t lie. It’s easy to paint myself with all these bright colors, or worse, put on a victim’s mask and pretend that I was wronged over and over while trying to be an angel. I was no more an angel than Paul a saint.

Yeah, he always had some well-rehearsed excuse for not working full time or losing a job or not keeping up with the house. He carried on with at least two women that I suspect he had affairs with. And he said he wanted music over his son.

But I can be a fairly demanding bitch. I want an equal partnership. I’m not interested in carrying other people and I don’t really know better ways to tell someone this than to get all drill instructor on his ass when he falls out of line. And, while I never cheated, I certainly entertained the idea on two separate occasions (an eye for an eye, maybe). Sometimes, I wonder what my life would be like had I escaped with the one that asked me. I wonder now and I wondered many a night after that one left my life. No, I am not an angel.

I tried, though. I really, honestly, can say that I wanted our relationship to work. I wanted to be married to Paul until my dying day. Even when I knew I wouldn’t be- long before we announced our divorce- I never stopped wanting a different reality than the one we lived. Even as we watched our relationship nose dive into the oceans of divorce, I kept praying for some sort of miraculous recovery that never came. I loved the man and I wanted that back. I lost good friends defending him when they said things I already knew. I didn’t want the resentment which, I think, ultimately was the final push that ripped us apart. But reality is what it is and what we had is gone.

So, today; nine months after I left Washington; I asked a coworker for a friendly cup of coffee. “No pressure” I said with a smile. He agreed.

And that was that. I cried on the way home. I pulled over into a cemetery parking lot (how melodramatic) and balled my eyes out.  I cried because, even though I’ve intellectually known we have been over for about a year now, this felt like the final nail emotionally. I cried because I’m still hurt by the divorce. Because up until the divorce, I had a partner every day of my life since I was sixteen, one lined up right behind the other (I’ve met my next boyfriend while dating my current each time but never cheated), and I don’t have that safety net any longer. I cried because I’m lonely. I cried because I am acutely aware of the walls I’ve built around myself all my life and now I simultaneously want to break them down and hide further within them.

I cried the way a newborn does when air fills its lungs for the first time. 

Brick by Brick

                “When you say things like that, you are putting up a wall. Talking to you, sometimes, is like being lost in a maze. It is so frustrating!” He said to me in exasperation one night.

                “Then why do you keep doing it?” I snapped. My passions ran just as high as his; or maybe more considering he had eighteen years on me with which to practice controlling his emotions.

                “Because I love the girl that hides in the center!” His words stopped me dead. I couldn’t manage even so much as the derisive snort that was the mortar to my emotional bricks. I sat there, mouth agape. Never had I heard those words spoken with that amount of truth. “The girl in the center of all this anger and mockery and sarcasm is so soft, so sweet, so innocent and naïve. I want to pull her close to me and protect her from everything. I want to love her, to help her break down these walls. Don’t you see the walls that keep me out also trap you in? Break down those walls!”

                As we were both self-described writers, our words on those first ardent evenings tended towards the dramatic.

                “I love this person I only get to see, I wish you would let her out more,” someone else said to me twelve years later as I curled in his embrace and whispered cloying sweet nothings. And he said it again when I delighted in kittens, when I kicked and laughed at his tickling fingers, and when I wore my brilliantly scarlet heart on my sleeve.

                When I felt insecure or embarrassed, another wall dropped. Cold, heavy stones avalanched from the sky between him and me. Sometimes, it was easy to push the pebbles aside but as the stones continued to fall, they grew in size, and it became too tiresome to move or circumvent them. Now, there are mountain ranges, both figurative and literal, between us. And I still have my walls.

                These walls are so big and ever present that I can see them. If I make a quip about needing help, there’s one. When someone pays me a compliment and I counter it with a critique of my own work, there’s another one. How about when I edit the words coming out of my mouth to present a very specific image of myself? Most definitely. Or when I blurt out something  far too blunt? Oh, yeah. Even if I were to say “Ask me anything and I’ll answer honestly” it’s in hopes that the strength in that statement, that challenge, will be enough to hide any damaging truth that might be uncovered in the inquisition. It’s funny. So many of my walls damage me more than whoever has come knocking. It’s as if I’d rather the brick fall on my toe than risk the possibility someone else might find something exposed.  How many good people have I pushed aside in an effort to protect myself from the very few bad people in this world? And what can I do about it? I don’t know.

                I wish that there was a way to blast them all away. When I say, “This is me. You get what you see,” I wish people saw more than just some rough bitch. Why do I let so few people see all the other parts, the parts that make the sum greater than the whole?

                Of all the times to attempt to present a whole picture, isn’t this the time to do it? When I’ll be gone in a few months and anything bad that comes from all this will be a fading memory by Christmas? Isn’t the prospect of an easy escape just another wall?