Month: July 2014

A quick trip around the garden and yard this morning quickly explained why the neighborhood bears have come back to visit.

A couple days ago, I blogged about liberating myself from the pressures of trying to measure up physically to the standards of people who would never grant approval.  The mention in that post of some of the people who had bullied me about my appearance (among other things) sparked a separate conversation on Facebook between a group of friends from that same school who still harbored strong feelings about their time on the receiving end of similar bullying.

We each recalled favorite moments – one person remembered a death threat in a yearbook.  I remembered seeing some of the most disgusting anti-Semitic behavior I had ever seen in real life directed at a girl who would become one of my best friends. I know we all remembered being laughed at one morning as our group of social rejects waited for early rides home as we mourned the suicide of a friend the night before.

One person offered a quote that I’ve heard many times since those days – “Living well is the best revenge,” and I thought about the people who had joined the chat.  One, despite years of verbal abuse by the ‘in’ crowd, has gone on to get her PhD in Biology.  Another, an amazing artist who endured a severe beating for the crime of being suspected of being gay, has gone on to work at a school helping foster the creativity of other artists. Others who did not join our conversation but have, despite living through four years of racial or anti-Semitic slurs, gone on to top-notch schools and are doing great things.

We are all living well. But the bullying stays with us.

I don’t think any of us wants or ever wanted revenge (well maybe I had a few fantasies). But living well doesn’t diminish the impact of those years on our psyches and self-confidence, and it got me to wondering.  What ever happened to the bullies?

I know they were never punished in high school, even though they often perpetrated their abuse in full view of the ‘grown-ups’.  The culture of ‘boys will be boys’ was still in its hey-day, and  bullying was a rite of passage for the so-called strong.  I reject the idea that some kids need to be cannon fodder in order to build up the confidence of others, but I also feel pity for those who built at least part of their identities on torturing others. Do they even remember their actions or understand the hurt they caused?  Does it bother them, or do they just accept it as part of ‘growing up’?  Do they think of themselves as good people despite the very intentional hurt they caused and the pleasure they seemed to derive from it or do they know that they are in fact bullies?

I don’t know, so even though I’m not very religious, I offer this prayer for them.

I pray you feel some remorse for the pain you inflicted when you laughed at a group of misfits as they mourned the suicide of friend the night before.

I pray when you do feel remorse that it only makes you a little uncomfortable and does not give you even a fraction of the pain you caused us.

I pray your child never experiences the misery of knowing someone like you were.

I pray you forgive yourself if he or she comes home crying because someone has the same things to them that you said to so many others.

Most of all, I pray that you and I will stop this cycle of bad acting and teach our children, above all, to first be kind.

It looked like the perfect bag for my purposes, but I wasn’t sure if it would hold everything just right. So I marched the toiletries kit over to the makeup counter and began pulling out the paper stuffing and shoved in the sketchpad and journal I always carry in my purse.  The sales girl (she looked like she was barely out of high school) watched me with a bemused smile.

“I’m not shoplifting,” I said.

“Making sure it all fits?” She said and smiled wider. “I take a lot of makeup too.”

I scratched my head and nodded but didn’t say anything.  I wasn’t wearing any makeup, and my hair looked like I had just rolled out of bed (just so we’re clear, I was doing the messy look at least a decade before the style became fashionable – it just wasn’t intentional), but I suppose even at my frumpiest someone might generously have thought I needed a small suitcase to carry the spackle and putty knife I’d need to make myself presentable on vacation.

But how could I tell the perfectly coiffed and made-up sales lady that I had other less noble intentions for this bag and that the only paint in our house is destined for our walls?  How would someone so seemingly-effortlessly attractive understand the perspective of someone who had never been comfortable with her appearance?  She probably never knew the sting of having other people tell her they were uncomfortable with her appearance?

I wish I were kidding when I say a guy in high school told me once for about three years in a row that when I grew up my Native American stripper name should be ‘Dances for Dog Biscuits’ (and that was one of the kinder comments).  I wish I could say I was and am mature enough to have let the barbs roll off my back, but there were enough of them from enough people that they did sink in, and I eventually wondered if I had one of those faces that only a parent or a very near-sighted husband could stomach.

I spent a few years trying to improve things, but after spending more money than the pentagon on hair extensions, makeup, failed fashion ventures, and all the other things that help a girl attract a guy with low standards, I threw in the trowel and decided to wait for the afore-mentioned near-sighted husband in the form of the Big Guy.

Throwing in the towel is actually quite liberating. It allows you to focus on other priorities like losing weight for your health or – gasp – finishing your education so you can stay gainfully employed.  The Big Guy tells me what I need to hear, and when Thing-One came along, he changed my priorities.

Now with my own eyes going off the rails, I realize that my face doesn’t look nearly as asymmetrical, but it doesn’t distract from what I’ve learned makes life complete.  I’m still weight-obsessed so that Amtrak doesn’t charge me for a second seat on our trip, but it’s not so I can fit into the next size down.  The dress.. uh jean size doesn’t make me a better parent, it doesn’t improve my writing, and it doesn’t make drawing or painting anymore fulfilling.

I’m sure the neanderthals who tortured me in high school (and beyond) are still neanderthals and would say the same thing if they saw me on the street today.  I’ve gained weight over the years, and the improved hearing that comes with the extra poundage has enabled me to truly enjoy all sorts of comments by complete strangers about how little respect I (like all overweight people) have for myself.  I think they’re wrong.  I think the fact that I no longer let a quest to achieve someone else’s definition of beauty define my life is anything but a lack of self-respect.  It’s a just a different set of priorities.

So as the cosmetic lady offered me a compact case and a mystery bottle of beauty glop to test the size of my mini suitcase, I shook my head and grinned.

Actually, I’m using it for my art supplies,” I said.  “I’ll just pack my toothbrush and toothpaste in a Ziplock bag.”  Her smile faded a bit, and then she nodded, turning to help another customer who might still be saved from misplaced priorities.

Our Common Threads Give Away is underway, and this month’s guest artist, Karen Heenan of the blog, Sewing By the Seat of My Pants, is offering a stuffed lion.  Made from recycled sweaters with a t-shirt jersey fringe you can win him.

 

To enter the Common Thread Give-a-way, leave a comment on her blog at  Sewing By the Seat of My Pants,and then visit each of our other artists:   Jon Katz, Maria Wulf, Kim Gifford and Jane McMillan!

 

Most of the time living off grid here on Minister Hill is easier than being connected.  We never lose power, our wood stove heats water in winter and the sun heats it in summer.  Ironically, spring is one of the few times when we feel a bit disconnected.

Normally it’s not that big a deal – I save my showers for after a workout when I’m hot anyway (gardening, cleaning, chasing the kids).  Thing1 does his part by taking cold showers, Thing2 is more than happy to skip them altogether, and we get through shoulder season – that time of year when we get too much rain to heat the water with solar and too much heat to want a fire in the woodstove – without too much pain.

Except this year.  Our dishwasher died which meant for about six weeks during the resuscitation attempts, burial and cash-ectomy for a new one, we were back to doing dishes by hand.  The Dishwasher-less Experience during shoulder season involved an introductory week or two of choosing to use hot water for washing a pot or the crew.  Then, in an effort to preserve a few drops of luke warm water for the shower – I began heating water for dishes on the gas stove a la Little House on Minister Hill.

We adopted the dishwasher when we went off grid after learning that it actually used less water than doing dishes the old-fashioned way and deciding five years of hand washing was enough of the Little-Old-House-in-the-Big-Woods experience.  Watching the pile in the sink grow for the better part of two months, I regularly wondered if I should continue doing my part for behavioural science by seeing if our teenager (who is assigned to the emptying of the dead dishwasher) would move himself to wash a dish before we ended up using paper plates or if I should just call the experiment a washout.  Like my clutter-based child psychology experiments, the answer to the question of who will deal with the mess when it gets bad enough is ‘Mom.’

 

Katy-the-Wonder-Dog’s bladder still hasn’t learned to wake up an hour later on Saturday morning to let me sleep in one day a week, but today that was okay.  I was trying to sneak out for an early morning writing session at my favorite cafe and was running around the house like a silent thief as I popped my iPad into my purse full of glasses (a pair for reading, a pair for driving, a pair for drawing).   And there, as I as ready to sneak out, was Katy, wagging her tail, letting me know she was crossing her legs and that there were deer in the meadow across the way that needed barking at.

I set down my bag and got a good hold on her collar before opening the door and trotting out to her line.  Katy wagged her tail when she heard the  clicking sound of the clip and looked up at me for a quick neck rub.  I petted and rubbed while she wagged and slobbered for a minute, and then I remembered I needed a sketch pad.  

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I told her and went back into the house, wiping doggie slobber off of what I just realized was my bare leg.  

I wish I could say this was my first streaking adventure, but when we first moved to Vermont (a full decade before Google Earth came along), we quickly learned to appreciate certain aspects of country life. The solitude.  The privacy.  The freedom to make a mad dash to the laundry line for the work shirt you forgot to bring in the night before and only remembered after you were “ready” to step in the shower.  We’ve even taken advantage of a good rainstorm to get a ‘natural’ shower or two.

The proliferation of the knowledge that “we are being watched” by the tech gods in the sky – all the time – has tempered my high-velocity nudism, but sometimes it’s too easy to bask in convenience and imagined privacy.  Sometimes I just want to enjoy the privileges that come with being surrounded by acres of forest.  Even if it means risking a broken lense on a satellite camera.

 Now,two feet from the door, in the almost-altogether (I’d remembered to pull on my sweats earlier apparently), I raised my eyes to the heavens, silently imploring Google Satellite to stick to its policy of blurring details on the ground in order to spare America the image of an inadvertent exercise privacy run amok.  

I was already so late for the potluck that my contribution had required a stop at the grocery store for a deli-made salad (that looked better than anything I would have made) and a disposable pot-luck container to cover my tracks, so I felt more than a little guilty about even being tempted to stop.  But ye without sin can cast the first salad tong.

In my defense, there was a six foot banner hanging from the extended arm of the utility truck’s cherry picker advertising the sale, so there was no way I would be able to pass it twice without stopping. I restrained myself on the way out, but as the banner came into view on the way home, I decided it was a sign (a pretty good one too – there was no way you could miss it).  What happened next is a blur. I pulled over to park at the end of a line of cars.

The garage sale was a garage sale in name only.  In reality it was a three-barns-full-of-pretty-cool-stuff-I-aboslutely-didn’t-need-sale. My palms began to sweat as I walked up the driveway lined with furniture in reasonably good condition.

Now, our house needs more furniture like it needs a pet-door for our house-mouse population, but that didn’t keep my bargain antennae from quivering as I noticed a breakfast table and chairs for an outrageously good price (cherry or something like that, 4 chairs and pedestal table for $150 – not bad, right).   Obviously we have a perfectly good breakfast table, but I knew a reasonably-priced something-we-might-need-if-our-concrete-house was about to pop up on my radar.

And there it was – a sinful red velveteen loveseat for my studio (Virginia never mentioned how calling that room of your own a studio could cause you to go mad with power).  It had kind of a bohemian look that would completely clash with the rest of the room, and I loved it.  I began trying to figure out how to get it on top of my car without collapsing the ceiling and then I remembered help would be needed at the end and how happy the Big Guy was the last time I rolled down the driveway with a two-ton ten-dollar tag sale find that only needed a little TLC (stripping, sanding and staining) strapped to the top of my newly-dented minivan.  The couch would be as big a hit as a new puppy.

Then I remembered what I really needed was an easel – something that was clearly absent from this garage sale to end all garage sales.  And, oh yeah, I was late. Getting my heart palpitations under control, I stuffed my hands in my pockets and sauntered to the car feeling slightly less out-of-control, my rooftop clear and my conscience only slightly dented.

The size is different this year, but I’m basically repeating the same motions as last year, hoping for a better outcome than before.  It’s not something radically different that I want – looking for a completely altered ending from the same story would be the definition of insanity – a condition I know well.

But hopefully repeating the steps improves skill enough to make the end of the story a little happier each year.  That is the definition of gardening.