Emails vs. phone calls

Posted on December 2, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

I dislike the telephone. I’d much rather get an email. Or a letter.

Getting a phone call is like a home invasion to me. It happens unexpectedly. I have to deal with it right then. There is no time to compose myself and make sure I say the right thing.

Emails are slower. I can deal with emails when I feel like it. Emails are like the slow cooker where phone calls are the microwave. But even with the microwave I get the choice to turn it on. The microwave doesn’t suddenly spew out food and say “It is time to eat now!”

Phone calls are like someone showing up at my home while I’m relaxing in my jammies and them saying ok, now it is time to go out to eat supper with your family and your coworkers, no time to get dressed, and we hope you get embarrassed. A lot.

How did I ever survive before email? I guess I didn’t know any better. That creeping, sinking feeling in my gut was just normal. I didn’t have a choice.

It is like life before antibiotics and immunizations. You just had a few (hundred) people die every year. Nothing you can do about it, so sorry. We didn’t have a choice, so we didn’t think about it.

I get tongue tied when I talk on the phone. I get my wires crossed. My point doesn’t go across, it goes sideways.

It is part of why I made a rule that my brother no longer call me. If he wanted to communicate, it had to be by letter. Well, part of that was because he would say I said something I didn’t, so with a letter I had proof I wasn’t going insane, but that is another story. Some of it was to make sure I said what I meant to say.

I had a coworker once who got really frustrated with me that I got tongue-tied. She said “But you have a degree in English!” Right. I do. I don’t have a degree in talking. I write. With writing I can think about what I want to say. Then I can go over it and make sure the words say what I think they say. But with speech I don’t have that luxury. It is right then, no waiting.

I don’t text. Not really. They are too much like phone calls. They are a lot like emails, but more immediate. I don’t get the point of texts when there is something already like them around that works. I turned off the texting on my phone because I don’t want it and it costs extra. People still try to text me anyway and sometimes it goes through. When it doesn’t, they get upset that I didn’t answer. Texts aren’t like emails in that way. At least when an email doesn’t go through you get a message saying so.

Let’s being back letters. They can be personalized. They can have pictures and doodads inside. They can have glitter too. And for the paranoid among us, letters aren’t that interesting to the bogeymen.

Taking pictures in art galleries.

Posted on December 1, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

Censuring people doesn’t make them stop doing something wrong. Sometimes it only makes them get more sly about doing something wrong. Authority figures should give praise for doing good rather than censuring people for doing bad. Every child psychology book teaches this – if you want a behavior to continue, give it attention and energy. So if you want bad to continue, call attention to it. If you want it to go away, ignore it.

When I was in middle school, my Mom was the substitute teacher in my classroom once. This wasn’t the smartest of things to have the Mom in the classroom with the student, but there you go. Everyone was talking at one point, except me. I knew better. It is my Mom, after all. If they got punished, I’d get punished more at home. This is a basic rule.

She assigned writing sentences to everybody as punishment. It seems like a strange punishment, but it was common at least when I was growing up. It seems like it will make students equate writing with punishment, when writing can be very healing. Certainly, writing the same sentence over and over – some inane mantra about how they resolve to not do whatever infraction again, isn’t healing. It is silly. But I digress.

Everybody had to write the sentences, including me. I wasn’t guilty. But I had to do it anyway, in part so my Mom wouldn’t get accused of favoritism. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And it made me want to do something wrong to make up for it. I needed to deserve to be punished. I got the pain of punishment, I should get the thrill of the crime. I don’t remember what I did to make up for it. I just remember the lesson.

One year when I was in college I was headed out for spring break. It was early in the morning. I was speeding. The speedometer registers up to 140. This makes no sense because there is no place in America where you can legally go over 70. So I wanted to find out what 100 miles an hour felt like. I got up to 95 and realized that was way too fast for me. I started to ease back down and passed a cop. He caught me fair and square. I had to go to jail and post bail on myself. There was a court date later so I could pay the ticket. It wasn’t just a simple thing.

Now, while I admit that I was breaking a law, I wasn’t breaking the one I normally broke while I drove at that time in my life. I had gotten in the habit of getting stoned all the time. Getting stoned all the time meant that I was stoned when I drove. Sometimes that meant getting stoned while I drove. This boggles my mind now that I thought this was a good idea. But this time I was stone cold sober. When I was stoned I was very careful about not breaking any other laws. It is a good idea that if you are breaking one law, don’t break another one because chances are you will get caught for one and then the other one will go along for the ride. If only the people who star on “Cops” would learn this truth.

So I came back from spring break early and spent it with a friend who was still on campus. We got stoned a lot. I got out my need for speed by playing driving games in the student center on an upright console. And I remembered the “lesson” I learned when I was in middle school.

A few years ago I went to an art gallery and got thoroughly chastised by the guard for taking a picture in the gallery. Of the floor. The floor, for goodness sakes. I hadn’t planned on taking pictures of the art. I understand about copyright and the desire of the artist to protect her intellectual property. The gift shop wants to make money on the catalog as well. But the floor isn’t art. It is cool looking, and it looked like it would be good to use as a digital wallpaper on my phone. But the guard lost her mind. I was thoroughly chastised.

And all the old memories and twisted training came back. If I’m going to be censured for something, I’d better be censured for actually doing something worth being censured over. Do the crime, do the time, right? But I’m not about doing the time without doing the crime.

So I got sly. I took pictures. I figured out how to take pictures using my phone in a way that doesn’t look like I’m taking pictures. First step – turn off the sound to the phone so it doesn’t make the annoyingly loud “shutter release” sound that is pointless on a camera phone anyway. There is no shutter to release because it is all digital. Then, look like you are texting. Don’t hold the phone up to your eye. Angles are important here. The zoom feature helps. Having a cohort to look out for guards and/or provide a human shield helps too.

I’m glad I did. I have later bought the catalog for the exhibit, once it went on sale. I mean really, there is no reason a catalog should cost the same as a college textbook. But then lo and behold, the piece that I really really liked wasn’t in the catalog. Some of the pieces I liked were. But the whole exhibit wasn’t present. So if I’d not taken the pictures, it would be gone.

There was one exhibition I liked that I went to in Boone, NC where the exhibit was site specific. It existed only then and there. It was created there for that space. The gallery has a photographic record of the construction of the exhibit, but not it, itself. It is gone. This is a shame, because it was really beautiful and it isn’t fair that people who weren’t able to go to this tiny art gallery in the middle of nowhere should be denied the beauty of this piece. Art is meant to be seen.

So, yes, I take pictures in art galleries. And I’m going to do it again.

Thanksgiving, the other way.

Posted on November 28, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

I hate the holidays. They always feel like a nasty game of musical chairs. If you end up without a chair at a table, you are the loser. So everybody tries to find a place to be, even if that place isn’t that nice. We’d rather spend the holiday with people we don’t really like and who don’t really like us than spend the holiday alone.

Thanksgiving is the first of the holidays. I dislike Thanksgiving. I love giving thanks, I just don’t like Thanksgiving. It is a trial run for Christmas. Both holidays are where you push yourself into a role that isn’t you, to please people you don’t like.

The holidays have left me cold for years. They always make me feel artificial. I’m expected to cook when I don’t cook. I’m expected to cook foods that are only cooked this time of year. I’m expected to wear nice clothes and act nice and play nice.

For twice a year we get together with people we don’t spend time with during the rest of the year because we really don’t like them. If we liked them, we’d spend more than twice a year with them.

Perhaps this is why so many people drink during the holidays. Perhaps this is why so many people go out to see movies or to the mall during the holidays. That way they don’t have to spend any time with each other that involves any semblance of having to communicate with each other. Perhaps this is why so many police get domestic disturbance calls during the holidays.

Nothing puts the “fun” in “dysfunctional” like the holidays.

I propose something different. Instead of doing the way that we’ve always done it, let’s do it differently. Let’s do it the way that we really want to do it. Let’s reinvent the holidays.

This year’s Thanksgiving could have gone really badly. I’d gotten into a huge disagreement with my sister in law. I’d realized that I’d been faking it going over to our parents in law’s anyway. Skip it. Skip it all. Why pretend anymore? I got tired of that gnawing feeling in my belly that says “something’s wrong!” I’d ignored it, suppressed it, hidden it. It was just part of dealing with the holidays. It was part of my childhood, ignoring that feeling. That sick feeling was just normal.

But this year I chose to do something different. Why spend time with people I don’t like? Why cook foods I don’t like, or that I only eat twice a year. I mean, I like sweet potatoes and all, but what about the fourth Thursday of November says I have to eat them? And why is there nothing healthy to eat on Thanksgiving? No fresh vegetables to be seen – everything is baked or broiled to within an inch of its life. It feels a little creepy to give thanks over food that is going to kill you.

It seems like the healthiest part about celebrating Thanksgiving means actually doing something to be thankful for.

This year was just my husband and I. This disagreement came just two days before Thanksgiving so there wasn’t enough time to wrangle an “Orphan’s Thanksgiving” like I’ve done in the past. We ate at the dining room table for the first time in a decade. We normally eat in the living room, while watching TV. This time, no TV. This time, candles. This time, just the two of us, facing each other, enjoying our meal, and spending time together.

It was very healing. It was exactly what I wanted. It was exactly what we needed. I caught a glimpse of what Sabbath is like.

We used special plates. We cooked what we wanted. There was turkey, sure. I don’t think it is possible for me to rewrite Thanksgiving without at least having turkey. But there was more, and it was healthy. It was all from scratch. Mashed potatoes made with purple potatoes, seasoned with cilantro and thyme. Sautéed carrots and snow peas, cooked in butter, white zinfandel, and turmeric. And crunchy bread – hoagie rolls, fresh from the bakery, heated up in the oven with a little butter. It was perfect. It was just enough, and not too much. I think we’ll do it again, and not wait a year to do it.

Maybe next week.

Today, I’m thankful for the courage to make new traditions. Today, I’m thankful for the desire to take care of myself. This was a good Thanksgiving.

Peacemaker and the Process.

Posted on November 28, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

I said at one point about a year ago that my goal in life was to be a peacemaker. I’m not doing a very good job of it. Either I need to reapply myself to my goal, or I need to be honest with myself about what my goal really is.

When I said that was my goal I was in the deacon discernment program in the Episcopal Church. It was tedious. It was a lot longer and harder than I thought it would be. I thought that if a person said that they wanted to be helpful to people, they’d be given some training and some oversight and a task right away. Folks would get help in a helpful way, soon. Nope. Their plan was wait three years and think about it. Meanwhile, I’m stumbling along, clueless. Meanwhile, people are still coming to me with their problems and I still don’t really know what to do.

Part of the Process of discerning if you are called by God to be a deacon in that church, and it really is a Process with a capital P, is a series of assignments. You get an assignment once a month. You need a whole month to work on it. The last one that I was given before the Process was put on “pause” (read, thanks for playing, but you can stop now, you aren’t what we are looking for) was about my goals for life. It was to teach me that everything that I’ve already done in my life was training for what I’m going to do. I felt a bit cheated. If I already have all the training and experience, then what do I need this Process for? If I can figure out for myself what I’m being called to then why do I have to go to these meetings every month and bare my soul to these near strangers?

I’m a little bitter, still, about the whole experience. I try not to write about it much because it just opens fresh wounds that I’m trying to heal. But I’m learning that it is important to examine the source of pain in order to heal. This is a new part of my practice. I’m still learning how.

I said that I wanted to be a peacemaker. I said that I’d love to travel around the world and get people who have disagreed for years to actually listen to each other for a change and see things from each other’s perspectives. I thought that peace in the Middle East would be a big coup.

But then I thought I’d need to learn all those languages, because you always lose something in translation. And I thought that they certainly wouldn’t listen to a young American woman. That is three strikes right there.

Is that the yetzer hara speaking again? Is that the voice of the “evil inclination” that is trying to prevent me from doing what I’m called to do? Or is it the voice of reason that points out that is really not my calling?

Who am I kidding? Peacemaker?

I don’t even talk to my brother or my aunt. I don’t go to my previous church in part because of a huge falling out with the priest. And I’m spending Thanksgiving at home with just my husband because of a falling out with his family. My circles just keep getting smaller.

I don’t have a great track record with making peace.

My usual modus operandi is to avoid the problem. If you don’t talk about it, it will go away, right? Don’t talk about the elephant in the room. We herded elephants in my family home. Just thinking about that madness makes my stomach start to cramp up again. Who doesn’t want to avoid pain? Running away seems very healthy. Until it isn’t, and you realize that you’ve run away your whole life and there isn’t anywhere to run away to anymore.

I feel like I was cheating a bit when I said that I wanted to be a peacemaker. It sounds good. It is close to what I want, what I feel called to. I don’t really want what I’m being called to – but then I want nothing else. The idea of not doing what I’ve been put on this Earth for makes me sad. Nothing is more tragic than seeing someone waste her life thinking she has another day, another month, another year to start living it. I don’t want to be that person.

But then I don’t have a word for what I’m called to. That was why I consented to be part of the Process. I figured it would separate the wheat from the chaff. I figured out it would separate the signal from the noise and let me know what I was hearing. I figured if several of us listened together we’d hear better.

Turns out instead of boiling off the stuff that I don’t need, like skimming off the scum from chicken soup that you are reducing to juicy goodness, it just boiled everything over and spilled it on the floor. I didn’t know I had so much in me. I didn’t know that I can’t be contained to one denomination’s rules and rubrics. I didn’t know that one expression of faith wasn’t going to be enough for me. I didn’t know that this process would widen things up instead of narrowing them down.

I know God works through everything. I know that everything I go through is from a loving God who wants the best and is working with and through me to bring forth what is best. I also know it doesn’t feel very fun while it is happening.

Perhaps peacemaker is part of it. Perhaps I need to know what peace isn’t in order to understand what peace is. Recovering addicts make really good counselors. They’ve been there. They know. Perhaps I’ll know what my calling is when I get there. Perhaps God is treating me like I’m a secret agent. Not even I know my mission because that is for the best that way. Perhaps I just need to live my way into it and take one moment at a time, with trust.

Friends – to be, or not to be

Posted on November 27, 2013 by betsybeadhead | 4 Comments

What constitutes a friend? When is someone just an acquaintance? Can you really say that someone is your “BFF” if you’ve only known them for a year? When is it time to admit that they just are not that into you?

I have very few friends from high school. In fact, I have very few friends I’ve known for more than ten years. I’m a little exacting about what makes up a friend. They don’t have to be perfect, but they do have to be present. And they do have to be kind and considerate.

About five years after I graduated high school a person I knew showed up at my workplace, asking if we were still friends. I would think that she already knew the answer by that point, but we were young and nobody had told us what the rules were about how to have a friend or how to know when a friendship is over.

We’d not talked in years. I was surprised she even knew where I worked. We’d just drifted apart, because we had nothing to hold us together. Leaving the artificial environment of high school does that. Life does that.

The fact that she just showed up where I work rather than calling me first and asking to talk to me was a clue that things were over. Regular friends are considerate of your time.

She wasn’t a regular friend. I was assigned to her when we were in fourth grade. A teacher came up to me and asked me to be her friend because she was a loner. Her life was a bit sad. Her father has died, but before that he had been abusive. Her mom was doing the best she could raising her alone, but they were poor. The already bad start was just compounded. The teacher was trying to help her out by pairing her with someone she thought would be sensitive and kind.

I don’t think the teacher thought about what this would do to me.

It taught me that friendship is about sacrificing your own needs for others. It taught me that friendship is about taking care of others. It taught me that my own needs don’t matter. It taught me that I had to be there for the friend, but the friend didn’t have to be there for me.

I read recently “I’d rather have four quarters than 100 pennies.” The person was writing about friendship and about quality over quantity. When I first read it I didn’t get it. They both add up to 100. Surely it is the same.

But it isn’t the same at all.

Time is precious and life is short. I’d rather have a few real friends than a bunch of acquaintances.

I had a gathering for my birthday recently at a local vegetarian restaurant. I invited about a dozen people. Most were able to come. It was a very good evening. Nobody was needy. Nobody had to be entertained. Everybody there was the kind of person who is comfortable being in her or his own skin, and it showed. Everybody there was the kind of person who knew how to get along well with others, especially ones that they didn’t know.

And I felt better. I’m glad that I’m making healthy choices for myself. I’m glad that the food that I’m putting in me and the people I’m putting in my life are healthy ones.

It has been a long time to get to this point.

Death, or not.

Posted on November 25, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

My mother-in-law is dying. Or isn’t.

She has pancreatic cancer. She was diagnosed in December of last year. It was stage three, possibly stage four. There is no stage five. She was given until about May. It is now late December. We are planning to have Thanksgiving at her house. We are talking about having Christmas this year too.

A year ago, just thinking about how that particular Christmas was going to be her last Christmas just tore her up. She was very teary. She didn’t think she’d even make it to another birthday, which was in November. She’s made it, and made it better than anybody expected. She’s still driving herself to her doctor’s appointments. She’s still at home, sleeping in her own bed. Hospice has not been called.

The trouble is, she has changed personality, and it really isn’t for the better. She was married young, and married to a very domineering man. She was very submissive. Her own personality was overshadowed by his. She grew up stunted, with all her energy being focused on one thing – the house.

She has spent her entire adult life playing house. She paints the rooms, again and again. She redecorates. She buys knickknacks. Decorating the house is all she talks about. All of her energy has gone into decorating her house. The results aren’t anything exciting. It is hard to believe her life energy has been spent in this way and there isn’t anything real to show for it. It is hard to believe that God put her on this earth to do this.

So she now has become assertive. She still works on the house, but she has gone from being passive to being pushy. She uses the fact that she has pancreatic cancer to push people around. She has cancer, so nobody else’s plans matter. Everyone else has to drop whatever they are doing and drive over and visit with her or do her bidding. She doesn’t ask, she commands. The fact that she has a limited lifespan is always part of it. You’d better do this, or else.

Or else what? She’ll die? You’ll feel guilty that you didn’t spend more time with her?

While I’m glad that she is starting to wake up to who she is, I wish she’d have gotten past the toddler stage a little sooner in life. Toddlers are always about me me me, and they never care about anybody else’s feelings or plans.

The problem is, she is in her 70s. She has had plenty of time to grow up, and she hasn’t. She has had plenty of time to be a productive person, and she hasn’t.

We all are dying. Being born is the beginning of death. None of us have any guarantees on how long we will live.

So there is nothing especially sad about a 70-plus year old woman getting cancer, even cancer that has a high rate of death. Death comes to us all. Many people don’t make it to her age.

What is tragic is that she didn’t wake up to the fact of her mortality sooner and do something useful with her life. What is tragic is that she didn’t stand up to her abusive, bullying husband earlier and leave him, taking their two sons with her. That would have saved them from years of being harmed in every way possible. What is tragic is that she is treating this time as a time to push other people around, when life isn’t ever about that. What is tragic is that when told she had cancer, she kept on decorating her house.

Maybe I’m reading this wrong. Or maybe I’m not. I’m angry at her acting hurt and put upon that she has a death sentence, when my own Mom died at 53. My mother in law has lived nearly 20 years longer than my Mom, and has nothing to show for it. My Mom volunteered all the time. She made the world better for other people. She wasn’t well educated, but she had an open heart and gave constantly. This woman, however, is a little child in an adult’s body.

I’m tired of her. I’m tired of her neediness. I’m tired of how shallow she is.

And I’m sick of myself for feeling this way. It isn’t very Christ-like. It isn’t very nice.

I wish she would have protected her son, my husband, when he was a child. To stand by while your child is being abused is to condone it. I don’t think she understands the depth of damage that caused. I don’t think she understood that her inaction was just as abusive because it translates to abandonment.

I wish she would have grown up sooner. I wish that she would have woken up to the truth of her mortality sooner. I wish that she would have become a human being sooner.

I guess late is better than never, but it still isn’t happening. She’s not blooming very well. She’s stunted and warped from her life, the life that she chose. There is nothing passive about this. She chose to marry him. She chose to continue to live with him. She chose to raise two boys when she herself was still a child. She chose to do what everybody else did rather than think for herself.

She chose to stay asleep.

She’s mirroring what she has seen her whole adult life, living with her husband. Her role model is a self-centered man who beats up on anyone he finds weaker than him. So she is blooming into a self-centered woman who pushes everybody around and expects them to drop whatever they are doing to take care of her.

God help us all.

Winter sunset

Posted on November 24, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

There are some colors that are impossible to name. They are beautiful and elusive and fragile.

I seem to be enamored of colors that aren’t really solid. They shift from one to another. If you wait ten minutes they change. If you take a picture it will never look like what your eyes saw. Yet, you still try.

I’ve tried to paint these colors, knowing all the while that they can’t be nailed down. That is part of their beauty. They don’t exist on a paint sample card from Lowe’s. They are several colors at once, and nothing in particular.

The winter sunset is one such example.

Sleeping cows.

Posted on November 24, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

This is the time of year that you see large round bales of hay on farmland. You’re driving along and you’ll look over to a bit of farmland and there they are, haybales.

Normally, you’d see cows there, but it is fall, and getting colder, so now you see bales of hay.

You either see cows, or you see big round haybales, but you never see both at the same time.

So I have a theory. These are hibernating cows.

They’ve rolled up, snug in a nice warm bundle of hay, and they are going to sleep right through the winter.

Now, you’ll never look at a big round bale of hay the same way again.

Tidy

Posted on November 21, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

I am a neatnik. My husband is a cluttermonster. God has a sense of humor.

While I feel that our small house has too much stuff in it, I also feel uncomfortable in a too tidy house. When I go over to a person’s house and there is nothing on the floor or nothing on the bathroom counter I begin to wonder. Do they really live there? Did they throw everything in the basement? Did they rent a storage unit just for this occasion?

I wonder if I have too much stuff or they are just better at hiding it.

When my mother in law first came over to our home, she actually said “Have you thought about getting a larger house?” This is one of those times where I got really angry yet somehow found the right thing to say. I answered “No, we’ve thought about getting less stuff.”

She should know better. She married a cluttermonster. My husband learned from him. She knows where this madness comes from. She’s lived with it for over 40 years.

I wanted to say “Hasn’t anyone taught you not to say everything you think?”