Freedom in the Apron

I’ve formally given my resignation. This decision has been in the making since January so please applause! It’s taken so long because I was put on several projects I wanted to faithfully complete. I never expected this experience to take 6 months.

The art of domesticity is in how you wear the apron, girls.

I’ll be refocusing and digesting all that I learned at this job and there’s a lot of greatness that will come from it. I chose to cease writing a novel for NaNoWriMo in November when this opportunity came and questioned if I was doing the right thing but I followed my gut feeling even though blind. It was the best decision for extended growth and wow have my eyes opened to allow for that! I learned so much about the function of the military, as in the philosophy of propaganda, that I had to make a choice: shut up and stay or feel the breath of freedom and leave. Once the stress of military politics began to affect my health, the decision became easy.

I am deeply grateful to the men and women who chose to endure the ups and downs of military life. It’s a greater sacrifice than the average person will ever understand and to best express this point, the very people who fight for freedoms have the least freedom of their own. It’s an odd reality for my immigrant-to-American mind. I don’t want to be a part of a system which demands subordination and I don’t have to be. This is a great American freedom to not take for granted… And I don’t.

I look forward to blogging more frequently while connecting back to my audience and the domestic art of caring for my home, my kids and family, my soul and my creative inner artist. I have waaaay too many blank canvases in my studio and waaaay too many dust bunnies I haven’t gotten to clearing. I’m totally cool with going back to the apron and domesticity. It’s how you wear the apron that makes the difference… And, no one ever said I gotta be barefoot to do it ( I have to wear-in those new hot red Chie Mihara shoes sometime).

 

*shortlink for this post:
http://wp.me/p3f9L-1JX

Read Full Post »

Writing: Oh fine. I quit quitting.

Fine. Fine. Fine. I’ll keep writing.

I just can’t keep writing the novel. I reached the place where I couldn’t handle the emotional level the story took and, as a writer I’ve not experienced this before. Not this strong anyway and I tried to just change the direction but the story itself is possessed by a creative force I don’t feel full control over. It’s like as soon as I began it said, “NO.” I attempted to push through the difficulty of continuing the writing process but my mind went blank. I mean like stark white nothing there blank. Overall, I’ve been unable to progress the storyline of the novel since day 4, though believe me I have tried.

I’m taking this “failure” and spinning it positive this way: the holidays are coming and I’ve got three awesome kiddies my husband and I need to tend to who are more important and thus writing can wait. It may be a super co-out justification – you know, “I choose family over writing a book” – but in the scope of it all, I do.

In all that I have to say, to express, to emulate, to pour out from my soul, none of it has a damn bit of importance if in the end my children don’t walk away into the real world without great memories of home and family. Last year our holidays were dampened by expat-transition difficulties. My oldest has only four more Christmas seasons before she’s a legal adult. Writing a novel can wait, I realize. I want to enjoy this holiday season and I need more time for the family, the domestic stuff, the Mrs. Santa workings which need that extra time I’m devoting to writing something which has left me so unexpectedly. Rather than pout, I’ve started watching Christmas movies with my 6 y/o.

With writing for Nanowrimo, I’ve also been making home made family album books for Christmas gifts to give out, each with about 600+ photos (what do you expect when you marry two photographers together and give them three kids, Europe and digital cameras?!) As I work on them sparingly through the day i think, what the hell am I doing focusing on writing when it’s not really a project that is filling my soul with happiness. It is silly to continue.

I’ve been rushing through the photos and album layouts “just to get them done”. Last year I savored the process and there was a lot of joy in it and the final outcome was awesome so, such is that. I’m having fun working on the family album and I’m dealing with stress writing. There is a no-brainer here: family over novel writing.

I will, however, continue to write more than laundry lists. So, I’m not quitting. I’m choosing a different road.

Read Full Post »

Solitude of Open Spaces

I love this photo!  Do you see that expansive space?  The blue sky?  The puffy white clouds?  The “amber waves of grain”?  And there, right in the center is the wonderment of childhood, so tiny really, in comparison to the vast environment.  And the silence…ahhhh. Oh, it had little to do with the fact that my 6 y/o was soooo far away because I used a wide-angle.   Instead, it had more to do with the fact that there were no cars, no people, no noise but the gentle sounds of Mother Earth doing her thing.

I’m a home body and in all honesty, I miss the home that provided the feeling of such space and solitude, -especially the quiet- without having to get dressed and walk uphill about 15 minutes just to get to a city park.  The playground is another 15 minutes from that!  Our home in the Savannah region has a backyard playground and faces about an acre or more of open grass space before we see a house on the other side.  The privacy, the peace, and the visible blue skies remind me of what we had on a regular basis:

I don’t think I’d feel this way if I were younger, childless or single.  OMG.  Wait.

I don’t think I’d feel this way if I hadn’t friggin’ sat in the middle of the American Dream come true for comparison!!!!

I love the city and the feeling that I’m part of life without having to be in the center of it.  However, the sights and sounds of motherhood for 14 years eventually resembles the chaotic headspin of a city’s hustled life.  I must be aging.  The hustle has been mastered, thank you.

So glad I experienced city life in its “nature” and its history because I’ve always wanted to live this dream:

…and of course, I’m glad for the experience of child rearing…because you know, I like wearing an apron with high heels while I pretend to be a French Maid who will get her kicks later.

So, I’m quite glad I don’t have to live in the city forever as the noise encroaches on your space of mind.  And, I’m so glad one day when I clean a room, it will stay that way.  There’s sunshine in the smallest of places.

Read Full Post »

!@#$ Ethics!

A week or so ago I was approached by a blog that shares written and audio stories of military families affected by PTSD.  My husband was approached first and I convinced him he needed to agree to an interview.  Little did I know it’d boomerang and I’d be interviewed too.  I was really nervous about it.  The topic is a delicate one.  However, the audio is currently being edited and will appear in about a month on their website.  After the interview I realized I forgot one major aspect to dealing with PTSD struggles and wrote the editor telling her I wanted to add it.  Well, now I’ve committed to an article and I’m having a really tough time with it.

The topic is family abandonment and denial to the reality of PTSD.  The piece in itself is very good and powerful but the story is centered around my life, which naturally includes my family.  The problem is, sharing the truth about the reality of this type of circumstance might one day hurt the very person it points abandonment at but I know others might find the information in it valuable.  I find myself in one of these ethical dilemmas of doing x for a greater good knowing that x might emotionally hurt a small group.  I always knew there was a problem with Utilitarisnism.  In fact, there’s a problem with every ethical theory out there.  It’s all relative and that makes it so much harder to make wise choices.

Read Full Post »

Middle Age & the Dying Memory

I’m temporarily living with family and the situation is difficult.  My great-grandmother (Great Ali) is dying in one bedroom and the longer I watch her transition from life to last breath the more I’m forced to think about life, which during this transitional stage of expat comes home is huge and heavy. 

I’m two weeks away from moving into what I’ve wanted for years and all of my emotions have ceased.  I’m a woman; I’m emotional.  I don’t know how to live on the emotion I can only describe as flat.  Damn lifeless emotion to be honest. 

I’m about to start a new life.  Great Ali is about to die any day now (for the past 8 weeks and counting).  Watching a loved one die can fuck up a lot of  emotional states and test love to put it mildly.  Everyone is a little stressed. I can’t even go see her anymore because the more I do the more attached I become.  I’ve never watched anyone die before.  I’ve had a few beautiful and loved friends die throughout my life but all were unexpected: murder, heart failure, drunk driving accident and the expected old age illnesses of grandparents. 

Great Ali is a Auschwitz survivor as I mentioned before.  Her life has been nothing but survival and I can clearly see she’s trying to survive her cancer.  She won’t.  She takes Morphine about every two hours before she’s in such pain I cringe watching her.  She’s deteriorating before my eyes and I just want to ask her to be courageous and die.  Doesn’t facing death take more courage than facing life?

I don’t know.  I’ve hit that odd place where my parents are next to go and the whole time issue is slapping me silly.  I know this move will bring me a life change but to a certain degree there’s a level of unknowns here that seem different to decipher in how to react to them.  I’m in the middle between true youth and true old age.  I’m middle aged and it’s not at all what I thought it would be.

I like it.  I’m in every way in the best state of mind I’ve been.  The maturity here is alluring to me.  There are many more equals in my age group.  To understand this, know I’ve struggled my whole life with being too mature, always seeking older friends/boyfriends just so I’d have someone who’d “get me” because I didn’t relate to my age group.  That age group caught up and I feel good around my generation.  I feel empowered as I’m just in that ripening stage.

What freaks me out is that there really is an “over the hill”; however, shouldn’t the decsent be easier than the climb? I’ll let you know unless a reader cares to enlighten us.

Great Ali lies on her deathbed recounting her regrets.  Her Holocaust experience made her a tough woman but in that tough exterior she lost the beauty and happiness of life.  She could have made her life different if only but none of that seems to matter anyway.  If only is based in the past.  Time ran out.  Game over.

A death like that is so sad to witness.  To me it’s witness to a person who didn’t live to her potential.  It’s such a waste.  It’s so saddening, so disappointing. 

A good family friend nicknamed “NoNo” was an old lady with so much spunk for life that if old people were like her we’d be worshiping the old rather than the young.  Over the Hill would be the paradise of life.

NoNo loved life.  She smoked, drank, sang, danced and told dirty jokes all the time, told people off, laughed more than anyone I knew and had the natural ability to make everyone around her laugh and love her*.  When she died she told my dad she didn’t regret one cigarette, one drink, one bad joke – nothing. 

“I had a good life.  I had fun,” NoNo said.  And that above all seems like the ultimate goal: die happy.  I don’t think one can die happy if one didn’t have a happy life because when one is in a state like Great Ali, there’s nothing important except the memories that keep the dying company.

* Great Ali on the other had was always healthy, active, didn’t smoke or drink and had no close friends or loved ones other than her only so.  She was lonely and lacked the love a person needs.

Read Full Post »