Epiphany

Somewhere in the six degrees of Facebookation, I have started to follow a group of bloggers in Chicago. Chicago. All I know of Chicago I learned from ER and Lewis Grizzard's columns from his time there. One of the Chicago chicks is I Want A Dumpster Baby. She's pretty darn cool and the blog I linked to is about her epiphany she just had nursing her newborn twins, Hall and Oates. Her epiphany led to my epiphany and I could not be any more relieved than I am right now.

If you didn't read IWADB's blog, it's about how feeding her babies has become her new smoke break. In it, she mentions taking one day at a time and making choices. Dammit. Wait a minute. I can take things one day at a time and I can choose what I do? Holy Hell. I'm being completely serious here. I have never stopped to think about things in the way she put them. I know these things. I am a Professional People Helper. I tell clients and friends all the time to take one day at a time. I tell my kids over and over and over again it's all about choices. But the light really went off over my head today.

Lately, I have been drowning in a sea of crap. One of my hopefully non-fatal character flaws is that I would rather be immobilized by fear than take a risk. On anything. I am a over-thinker and I always think through every conceivable outcome and a few no-way-this-could-ever-happen-not-even-in-a-Lifetime-movie ones. Then I get bogged down in details and fear and doubt so I freeze and do nothing.  But you know what? Thanks to IWADB, I don't have to! No, I may not ever get the house back to pre-divorce cleanliness  But today I can choose to put away the dishes and sweep the floor. Will I ever not have to juggle finances? I don't know. But today I can choose to not spend needlessly. Will I ever be sexy and sassy? Who knows. But today I can choose a fruit smoothie instead of a donut.

That , my lovelies, is empowerment and freedom.

Grief and Comfort

Lee Brice's "I Drive Your Truck" is probably my favorite song right now. The emotion in his voice coupled with the simple visuals in the lyrics give me chills every time I hear it. It also hits close to home for me. I don't have a truck but I do have a purse. A tacky, tacky purse that has been hanging in my closet since September 1995.

I'm pretty sure she got the purse at K-Mart. It doesn't matter, it fit her to a tee. I remember her always having a big purse. Sunflowers were her favorite. I'm glad this is the purse I have to remember her by. When she went in the hospital, she sent it home with me for safekeeping. I still have it but not her. Maybe I should have taken her home instead.

This purse is my anchor, my security blanket, my connection to Mother when I need her. There have been times I've taken it to bed, clutching it to my chest, seeking solace. The contents, though not much, bring so much comfort because they are her. The key to her handcuffs. Six different tubes of lipstick. Receipts from the credit union, one of them with the boxes I remember her doodling all my life.

Pictures of my sisters, forever 9 in the depths of the denim purse. An address book that has no area codes attached to the phone numbers. A scrap of paper with the specifications for a computer written in my brother in law's neat script. Worthless crap that would have been trashed as soon as she got the chance.