“where the head goes, the body follows” (famous wrestler)

“Shoulder up, keep your elbows in. BE FEMININE! Hips go with your steps and don’t forget to keep your mouth closed. BE FEMININE! Plant your feet, remember to use the muscle in your legs, not just the bones. BE FEMININE!!

 

Aw, crap. Remember ten years ago? Remember six years ago? The African dance where you didn’t vomit after 90 minutes of jumping in the air and following the drums? Remember the splits (left, right AND center)? Remember grace and musicality?

Apparently not. My poor salsa instructor addresses the whole group at once, trying to spare my feelings. (BE FEMININE!!). My face is coated with sweat. My back is aching. My stomach muscles are nowhere to be found (BE FEMININE!!). My right shoulder goes up at the time it is supposed to. Not the left. The left has gone rogue. It bounces ineffectively and then goes completely rigid, like I am at attention, like I have never danced before. (BE FEMININE!). I am not feminine– I am sweating, smelly, gasping and wriggling like some sort of invertebrate in the midst of a seizure. My head is way to involved in the movement. I can’t even hear the music anymore.

And then I give up, feeling defeated. Everything relaxes. I stop trying. And there I am, dancing. 

Oh yeah.

That was easy enough.

Frieeeeeeends!

We headed to the Oregon coast a few weeks ago for a birthday weekend full of aquariums, beaches and saltwater taffy. From the first night we arrived and were greeted at the hotel by the resident dogs (Pardner and Charlie, a giant whale of a golden retriever and a tiny Pekingese), it was an animal sort of weekend. We also met a Saint Bernard “puppy” that night who probably could have had one of us as a tasty snack if she were so inclined. The next morning, we pulled off the road at an ocean lookout point, watching the waves and the sun and the endless horizon. Within minutes, P pointed and said “look, a whale! I think it’s playing.” Sure enough- baby humpback, poking its nose out of the waves and blowing steam and– oh, wait a minute, there’s its mama! We watched them travel slowly north and then moved on.

    The aquarium was the next stop, with the Oddwater exhibit going on– hundreds of the strangest sea creatures I’ve ever seen. And, lo and behold– it’s otter feeding time! We watched the otters feast in an adorable way and I schemed on how I could sneak one out of the aquarium with little fuss.

We then hit the Rogue Brewery. What animal exists in this chapter, you might ask? Well, dogs, of course, since it was the annual Brewer Memorial Fest, an event created in honor of the owner’s late best friend and head brewer, Brewer the black labrador. Hundreds of people were there with their dogs, beer tasting and comparing canine companions. We walked around and settled down next to a Pekingese named Libby and her people, C and C. C squared turned out to be a couple recently moved from Chicago, he pursuing his PhD in chemical engineering at OSU (wha??!), she working at the Albany courthouse and trying to get in to law school. They also turned out to be in their late-twenties, not married, and without children– rare around the little town of Core-Values (Corvallis), Oregon. Oh, and did I mention– they were awesome.

What was planned as a brief lunch stop at the brewery turned into lunch, afternoon beer snack, walk, talk and socialize until after 9 o’clock. As we geared up to leave, P leaned to me: “Are we gonna get their numbers?” and I said “Friends! ( a la Frankenstein), and we actually high-fived behind their backs.  Really.

When C squared started to write down their numbers, she smiled sheepishly at him and said to us “Um. So you guys are our first friends on the West Coast and we are ridiculously excited. I just whispered to him ‘Friends!’”

I grinned at P. “We may or may not have just high-fived when you weren’t looking. So no worries.” Libby the Pekingese panted at us happily but we paid her no attention. We love you, animal world, but give us people any day.

Friends!!

Fixed.

     I have been a Child and Family Therapist for an entire month and one half now. That is six weeks of full-time fixin’ people, solving problems, making slammin’ diagnoses, and generally being an awesome person and professional.

False.

That is six full weeks of flailing, wavering, guessing, hoping, smiling, anxiety-ball squishing, finger-crossing and generally being an awesome, well-rounded, scared shitless human.

Today, I had separate phone conversations with a mother and daughter duo who have recently seceded from each other, emotionally and physically.

Daughter says: “I miss my mom. But I hate her too. I can’t stand how much she cries, and how soft-spoken she is. I want her to yell and scream, to give me something to push against. I want her to fight back so I know she wants to stick around.”

Mom says: “I am tired of everything. I can’t stand my daughter. I want her to let me be and take some space to herself so that I know she cares about me.”

I listen. I don’t know why I blog this. I think of my own mother, who wants me, who fights back, who has always stuck around, and will stick around until Somebody un-sticks her for good.

I think of my dad, too, who didn’t leave. Who didn’t ever try to forget me. Who walks the lengths of his day with my name somewhere in his present time (or “Miss Anita, Miss Anita”, which is close enough).

And I think about my friends and loves, who watch me flail, help me hope, and show up, every day, in one way or another, to support me with their awesomeness; some for a lifetime so far, some for five full years, as of today.

I’m thankful, I guess.

Happy five years, P.

Spot on.

I am the wordsmith in this household on any normal day. I trained long and hard for that distinguished position and generally relish giving witticisms, metaphors and quick retorts as daily bread for my less verbal and more introverted partner-in-crime, P. I convince myself that he loves it, too, and stays with me partially because I can be so verbally entertaining. I don’t want to know if that is true or not.

    One habit I have is reading in bed. And on the couch. Or any flat surface that allows me to lounge and ignore the world. P is not a reader, but I read him lines from any book in my hands as he walks in and out of rooms, collecting pieces and energy for whatever project with which is currently obsessed.

    One evening recently– a dark one, warm, and curled around our apartment like a great cat– I read in bed, swimming through the pages of a Mary Oliver book of poetry. Mary Oliver is able to say what is real in the spaces of my reality, and, I imagine, the collective reality of humans. I told my mother once that if I were forced, for some reason or cause, to tattoo my entire body with words, I would choose Mary Oliver’s words over anyone else’s.

  P came in the room, shedding his shirt for a shower. Without looking up, I read: “All my life and it has not come to more than this: beauty and terror”, and then smiled at P, proud of my find. P paused only for a second, looking back at me solemnly, and said “Most of MY life, and it has not come to more than this: hungry (and pointed to his stomach) and hair (ruffling his furry Ukrainian arm)”, and then walked out.

Touche. I don’t know if winning is relevant in this case, but he just won the round.

I laughed until my face hurt.