To find yourself you need to ditch the shades and take a good hard look at the person in the mirror...it doesn't matter what others think of you...it's all about getting to know "me,myself and I"
"My Story"
The Fish Bowl:
I’m the product of a generational fish bowl, one that clearly had gender divisions and I just so happened to fall into “girls take home economics and boys take shop class.” I was born in 1957 to a young couple who at the tender age of nineteen weren’t a hundred percent sure what to do with their new bundle, by that I mean, I was fed, clothed and loved but never told I could be anything I wanted to be. Now before you sigh and think, “poor thing” …let me clarify...MY FOLKS ARE WONDERFUL PEOPLE, but girls were raised to be girls, and boys were supposed to do boy stuff, whatever that means. In 2017 we have evolved and realize that boys can be fashion designers, nurses and nannies, while girls can aspire to be mechanics, race car drivers and even CEO’s of million dollar companies. The canvas of life is blank for them to color as they please. This is what’s so exciting for me as a grandmother. My grandchildren dream of shooting for the moon, while touching every star along the way. That’s the life lesson that was going to slap me in the face over and over again before I finally got the message…” If you dream it and believe it…you sure as hell can achieve it…or at least die knowing you’d tried.” I’d finally gotten tired and fed up with my fish bowl, so rather than wait to be flushed down the toilet after a life of swimming around and round and never getting anywhere, I took a leap of faith and escaped, heading for the open seas, damn near drowning along the way…but I didn’t. I’d like to say that my transition from fish bowl to open waters was a quick and painless one, but in reality it seemed to take a lifetime.
The Media:
We’re bombarded with a zillion images a day, some bounce off from us while others cling until they become foul, kind of like baby puke on your shoulder…you may not notice it at first, but when you start smelling like you’re rotting from the inside out, you’ll definitely look for the source. I have no idea how many television commercials or print ads I’ve been exposed to in my nearly sixty years on this planet, but I do know this…some of those sneaky little bastards got into my head and hatched a whole flock of demons that somehow shaped my self-image and worth. These little devils deserved to die an agonizing death or at least be exposed for the dirty little liars they were.
Now image, it’s the early seventies and you’re a young girl heading off to high school with thighs slightly touching. I was a definite pear shaped female who stood 5” 2’ on a good day. Add octagon shaped glasses, a center part and “tada” you have a clear visual of me, the mermaid wanna be. With my face freshly scrubbed with Noxzema and a generous layer of Clearasil acne cream covering my chin and nose, I skim through the pages of “TEEN” magazine trying to soak up everything I should be, but am not. Now it is imperative that I clarify, it wasn’t obvious to me at the time that my mind was absorbing the images before me. They would re-appear throughout the years like the slide projector presentations we had in science class, one image at a time. In a decade where women were burning their bra’s and Gloria Steinem was demanding equal rights and equal pay for woman, none of this impacted me in my neck of the woods. I was growing up in a small rural area of Northern Michigan. The fashionable and independent women who appeared in the pages of Cosmo were nowhere to be seen. If indeed they did exist, I’m not sure I’d have recognized them. The women who graced the covers of Cosmo and Glamour were still portrayed as sexual kittens who knew how to entice a man with their skillful application of false eyelashes and an alluring scent dabbed between their breasts. Airline stewardesses had to conform to height and weight requirements, not to mention being forced to wear outfits that were definitely designed as eye candy for the traveling male. Hugh Hefner in his ridiculous smoking jacket clearly didn’t allow Playboy Bunnies without thigh gaps to live in his mansion; so I struggled with the images that jumped up from the pages of those magazines. If I couldn’t be a stewardess or one of Hugh’s pets, and I didn’t live in New York where I could burn my training bra and march for equal rights, just what were my options? Little did I know this conundrum would plague me for years.
Onion Soup:
While the high fashion magazines tantalized their readers with articles captioned, “What’s it like to have a Latin Lover” and “How sex keeps you trim” I was being raised and spoon fed generous helpings of Good Housekeeping and Lady’s Home Journal. A tantalizing article in one of my mother’s magazines would read “Hearty dinners that are sure to please your man.” At the time I didn’t have a lot of worldly experience, but I knew “60-minute Lasagna from oven to table” could never compare to the possible excitement of a lover, Latin or otherwise. When you’re raised by a June Cleaver clone, you soon realize the importance of being a good homemaker and that didn’t include trysts with anyone other than the occasional interaction with the milkman or butcher. Women’s liberation may have been real in Chicago and sex kittens may have roamed the halls of a mansion in California, but in my little corner of the world, the art of homemaking and gender roles reigned supreme. My role model was part Betty Crocker, Singer sewing machine, a one woman Del Monte canning factory and a woman who could press pleats better than the local dry cleaners. The fact of the matter was this…my mom knew more than my Home Ec. teacher, thus my fate was sealed, or so it seemed for a very long time. There would be no lobster thermidor, liver pate’, chardonnay or a midnight soiree taking place in our home, but if you did stop in unannounced I could whip up a tasty chip dip with a carton of sour cream and a packet of Lipton onion soup mix. “Sour Cream is not just for baked potatoes anymore” was one of those helpful articles that needed to be cut out and taped to a recipe card. This handy little tidbit would serve as a quick reference when the doorbell rang unexpectedly and guests showed up on your doorstep.
Mini to Maxi:
Now I’d like to clarify that I wasn’t raised in the boondocks without running water or electricity, but it did take a good eighteen months or more for the fashion trends from both coasts to make their way to the clothing racks of our local JC Penney store. We were always a few seasons behind when it came to owning and wearing fake leather, knee high boots and platform shoes, but that didn’t stop us from trying it emulate the fashions we saw in glossy print. This is when it came in handy to have June Cleaver for a mom. We may have been behind the times in fashion due to our location on the map, but that wasn’t going to stop me from becoming the first to adopt the “maxi look” in my school. My mother had been spared the mini skirt phase since my pear shaped body and touching thighs didn’t mesh well with the fashion of tall leggy models. Simply put, I never wore anything short. This trend followed me well into the late 80’s when Nair hair removal plastered the airwaves with their “We wear short shorts” television commercials, but my body shape was made for the “Maxi” fad. Fashion had gone from barely covering your butt crack, to long skirts, ankle flowing dresses, and in my case, “THE VEST.” I begged my mother make me a long draping vest that fell just above my ankles. If you’re having a hard time envisioning my get up, think Bea Arthur from the famed television show Maude. The character of Maude Findlay was often seen wearing long flowing vests and scarves. The major difference between her look and mine, was about seven inches in opposite directions. She was tall, which made her vest knee length, whereas mine almost draped on the ground. I remember my mother cringing as she whipped up the fashion statement that I’d wear for an entire year with everything I owned. I truly reached the pinnacle of high fashion when I purchased a multi colored pair of platform shoes on a shopping trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Now you need to understand that Grand Rapids was a much larger town located two hours south of where I lived. Being a bit of a country mouse, the shopping experience for me was equivalent of a trip to New York. Grand Rapids was only ten to twelve months behind in carrying the latest fashions which made it a shopping mecca for a young girl. This fact alone was huge since the platform shoes I’d purchased wouldn’t be available locally for months. For once I would be a trend setter, touching thighs and all. I cringe as I look back at that time in my life and have to ask… “What screams high fashion and sophistication better than rainbow colored platform shoes and a floor length maxi vest draped upon a
country mouse?”
Bleach and Peaches and Never Again:
I’d like to say I graduated from high school and went off to be a neurosurgeon or banker, but the truth of the matter is this… I followed in the path of my mother and married my high school sweetheart. While my parent’s marriage is still intact after sixty years, mine lasted only ten, in which time I gave birth to two daughters within the first two years of marriage; thus my journey into the “art of homemaking” had begun. Though my path was similar to my mother’s, I did have my first inkling that I could be more than just a mother or somebody’s wife, but that’d have to wait as I sterilized bottles and bleached cloth diapers. I wasn’t seducing anyone with dabs of alluring perfume emanating from by breasts, but instead gave off whiffs of Clorox Bleach, 24/7. You have to understand, I’d been taught that a good mother bleached shoes laces and polished shoes. A good mother scrubbed poop stains from cloth diapers, so their darling daughters could poop on pristine nappies. As I look back I realize just how ridiculous that practice was. A cup of bleach in the washer would’ve sterilized the diapers. Did it really matter if they were poo- stain free? In 1977, in my world, the one where Betty Crocker was now a grandma…yes it mattered…big time! So I stepped into motherhood, baked cookies and sewed on buttons, but much of it didn’t feel authentic. I loved being a mom. Children in general flourished under my care. Kids loved me, and that character trait would follow me throughout my life, as a matter of fact there would be times I wished kids hated being in my presence, but that never happened The first crack in my glass persona came after I’d been married about three or four years, and canned by myself for the very first time. Up until then I’d joined my mother as her right hand man, canning together, with her clearly at the helm. This time around I was canning peaches without her guidance and giving each step my undivided attention. When the whole messy process was done, I stood back and surveyed my work. Each peach half was perfectly displayed, floating among its golden syrup. My effort was worthy of a blue ribbon at any county fair and I’d done it myself. Betty Crocker, aka my mother would’ve been proud, but it was my father I called to check out my latest feat of homemaking. Dad arrived and said the appropriate things, affirming his oldest child might someday be a domestic goddess just like his wife, my mother. I should’ve basked in his praise, but instead I felt an inner rebellion coming on. “Take a good look dad, because I’m never canning again!” And you know what? I never did. I wish I could say that my transformation took place right then and there, but it didn’t. It would take thirty more years before I made my stand. An internal civil war was brewing and I was still on the losing end.
Dark Shadows:
From 1966 to 1971 an American gothic soap opera graced the airwaves every afternoon at 4pm. I remember scrambling off the school bus just in time to watch Barnabas Collins the resident vampire, raise havoc in the sleepy coastal town of Collinsport, Maine. Everything about the poorly produced black and white show which later evolved into a color production, captured my imagination. At the center of it all was the lost love between Barnabas and Angelique Collins. Witchcraft, vampires, werewolves and a parallel universe ran rampant throughout my brain. Between the dead bodies, spooky music and eerie opening, the love Barnabas had for Angelique transcended above all his evil deeds. Or so I thought…what a load of crap! Once again I’d let my imagination mix fantasy with reality, which in turn created nothing but chaos. Somewhere in the middle of being a teen of the 70’s, a mother of the 80’s and wanting to break out of my mold, I’d developed an eating disorder, divorced, and then entered into an abusive relationship where I found myself living in my own version of Dark Shadows. If a parallel universe existed, I sure as hell couldn’t find the portal that led to a world filled with unicorns and cotton candy. Twenty years of my life disappeared as I struggled to keep my exterior façade intact, fooling those around me into believing I was a woman who had her head on straight. Nothing could’ve been farther from the truth. You can only tread water for so long before you drown. As I look back, my inner mermaid must have saved me because I finally broke to the surface of reality and knew I didn’t have to take this crap from any man. It was time to throw this particular carp back into the sea as I prayed a bigger predator would gobble him up, but not before he got a taste of his own medicine. I know the bible says “revenge is mine,” but I like to think God understood just how angry and bitter I was at that time in my life and maybe gave me a little leeway. I’d broken to the surface and was emotionally breathing again, but I still had a long way to go. I was in the tadpole stage of personal growth, it’d be many years before this thigh touching woman would grow a set of gills and contemplate becoming a mermaid after all.
What the hell, let’s try this again:
In my quest to find my voice and release the “real” me, I met a man nine years younger than myself who would later become my husband. At the ripe age of twenty- eight he took on an older woman with two teen daughters and didn’t even blink an eye, well not at the time anyway. (For the record, as of 2016 we’ve had 22 years of wedded bliss with a whole lot of piss and vinegar thrown in.) Now I’ll be the first to admit that my husband was mature for his age, had never been married and came from an alcoholic family whose only fun was in the word dys-fun-ctional itself. While I was trying to find myself, he was trying to shake free of his father’s influence. I had no idea who I wanted to become, whereas my husband knew exactly the kind of man he never wanted to be. I guess you could say we were a match made in heaven. If not heaven, at least a parallel universe where husbands didn’t hit their wives or expect them to keep their Long Island iced tea glass filled. Even though I’d managed to get my eating disorder under control, my brain still replayed the mixed messages of my youth. Burning my bra was no longer an option since I never wore one unless I had to. I’d taken college classes off and on for about twenty years which in the end produced a child development degree. As I look back, that was a total waste of my time and energy. All I’d been doing since I’d graduated from high school was raising kids, or taking care of other people’s children. Our home was a constant revolving door of kids and teens. I sure as hell didn’t need a degree to do what I’d already been doing. I’d evolved, yet life seemed to stand still. The seasons were changing, time was fleeting, my boobs were sagging, and my thighs still touched. Now that I think about it, my life would’ve made a great country song, perhaps with a catchy stanza that went something like this, “Saggy breasts and heavy thighs, life’s been rough ain’t gonna lie…I’ve been down, but I ain’t out, gonna find my voice, gonna flex my clout.” According to Hollywood standards, I was a cougar with a younger cub for a husband. That alone should have made me feel sexy, but I didn’t feel like a cougar. Instead I shuddered to think, “As a legal adult at the age of eighteen, my hubby would have had no facial hair, and most likely spent his afternoons sitting in front of cartoons after a hard day of simple addition in elementary school.” Creepy, right? Totally takes the sexy cougar image out of the equation. If I wasn’t cougar material, a Betty Crocker clone, or a bra burning feminist, just what the hell was I?
NANA, The Four Letter Word:
Life had settled into a nice routine. Was I happy? That’s a hard question to answer because “being happy” is what I strived to make sure other people felt. I wanted others around me to feel happy, be happy, live happy and productive lives, but I never stopped to apply the happiness principle to my own life. I knew my husband loved me and would never physically hurt me, my children were starting their own lives, my parents were alive and healthy, I had a roof over my head and food in the fridge…I thought that was enough. Once again I was about to discover something about myself. I wasn’t truly happy, and it would take a chubby baby boy to verify that fact. On what would’ve been just another day on the calendar, my oldest daughter went into labor. For the next twenty- three hours I lived in a bubble that didn’t feel real. My daughter was going to have a baby and that baby was coming home with us. The facts spoke for themselves, my daughter was going to be a single mother, one who wanted to finish college, so it’d been decided early in her pregnancy that she and the baby would live with us. A nursery was established, clothes, diapers, bottles and everything that a newborn required had been purchased. The end result was picture perfect, except the newborn himself was missing from the picture frame….and then he arrived and turned my world upside down. I would never view life through the same lens again. My grandson William had made me a grandmother, and in my mind I deserved to have a title of my own, thus “Nana” I became. It would be many years before I realized that NANA stood for “Not A Normal Adult.” Something magical happened the day William was placed into my arms. it would take the birth of my granddaughter Kaleigh, and another thirteen years before I truly knew who I was meant to be. I look back now and realize I was like a Thanksgiving turkey, slowly roasting until the pop- up timer jumps to surface of the breast meat announcing to all who have gathered…” I’m done, now you can ooh and aah at how magnificent I am!” I adored this little man child who was in my care as his mother pursued her teaching degree. I’d been down the path of parenting with my own two daughters, yet this time it was different, I was different. Changes had taken place deep inside of me and I wasn’t even aware of them until a wiggly, squiggly little boy slowly brought them to the surface. The more I acknowledged my buried emotions, the freer I became. A traditional prisoner is aware of why they’ve been incarcerated. I on the other hand was in a prison of my own making. The birth of my grandson started the process of my parole and I wasn’t aware I even needed one. It's amazing how we beat ourselves up, stifle our own creativity and devalue our worth. That was about to change thanks to Elmer’s glue and a paper plate!
ARTS AND CRAPS:
To say I loved being a Nana would have been an understatement. I thrived in my newly appointed role of surrogate mother/nana. The truth of the matter was shocking and I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but here goes… grandkids are more fun than the regular kids we give birth to. As I watched that hideous purple dinosaur Barney on PBS every morning and found his dumb little songs stuck in my head long after he had disappeared from the television screen, I’d turn around and do it again the very next day, all at the request of a little boy who held the strings to my heart and tugged them on a regular basis. I knew all of Thomas the Tank Engine’s friends by name and proudly rattled off my knowledge in the train section of our local toy store where other less informed patrons struggled with who went with whom. To be honest, I was in awe of this child and found it hard to believe I could love a male as much as I did this one. He was special. I know that all grandmother’s say that about their grandchildren, but mine was. By the time William was three years old he had an extensive vocabulary that rivaled that of a first grader and we followed him wherever his interests led. Trips to the local bookstore became our Saturday routine. It reminded me of the opening song from the television show CHEERS, where “everybody knows your name,” at the bookstore they sure knew ours. Soon another ritual began that would haunt me in a good way for years to come. Every day after lunch, out came the crafting box filled with everything one could possibly need to create something of unrecognizable wonderment. The fruits of our labor would adorn our fridge and walls. William couldn’t pronounce the word craft, it always came out as crap, hence “arts and craps” with Nana was born. Now I need to mention that I’m not a natural crafter, but “arts and craps” with my grandson gave me the freedom to go with the flow of the glitter glue to see where it took me. There was no perfection or standards to meet, only the fun of seeing how many different things one could construct from an empty toilet paper roll, googly eyes and a ball of yarn. “Arts and Craps” removed the blinders from my eyes as his crafting treasures touched my soul. Where I once saw myself sandwiched between expectations, I now began to see myself as a blank canvas. The nice thing about a blank canvas is the simple pleasure of filling it in with whatever tickles your fancy. It would take the birth of another spectacular child, my granddaughter, to tickle me pink and lead me on the next leg of my journey where fairies were real and mermaids swam the ocean blue.
Not just another drawing:
In 2005 my youngest daughter gave birth to a little girl she named Kaleigh Jean. That perfect little bundle opened the skies for me, allowing the brightest of sunrays to illuminate the next path on my road to self-discovery. Where William was inquisitive, Kaleigh was imaginative, and between the two of them Nana thrived. I may have “arts and craps” with William, but it was Kaleigh who had a natural inclination toward the arts and by the age of four her imagination was already formulating stories and adventures. I’d always dabbled in writing poetry and short stories, but nothing I’d ever shared with my loved ones besides the occasional birthday ditty and whatnot. With the arrival of my grandchildren I found myself constantly coming up with silly poetic sing songs and stories that had them clamoring, “Nana, sing it one more time!” It was during this time my restlessness began to get the better of me. Instead of trying to figure out what my problem was, I stuffed it back down inside of me like a woman trying to put on pantyhose two sizes too small. The more I pushed it down, the uneasiness reared its ugly head and bulged over into my life in other areas. Then in the summer of 2013 things changed, my emotional pantyhose stretched and my uneasiness began to reside due to a simple drawing and an earnest request from my granddaughter. Kaleigh happened to adore and believe in anything related to fairies and mermaids. I’d invented a story about magical “Woodland Fairies” who just happened to reside in our garden. Throw a bucket of glitter among the flowers and “bingo” fairy dust” and the fantasy continued. Now her mermaid fantasy was harder to feed, but with the purchase of a wearable mermaid tail, we were able to image what life in the open seas was really like as she swam in our backyard pool. We had many discussions about what mermaids looked like and her descriptions changed as she got older. At five she believed all mermaids looked like Disney’s Ariel, by the age of ten she knew that if they really existed they most likely resembled a fish with a beautiful tail and perhaps some flowing hair. It was one particular mermaid drawing that became the catalyst for me evolving into…what? Well, that part of my transformation wasn’t clear yet, but I was changing and so was my perception of me, myself and I. Kaleigh had presented me a picture she’d drawn of three mermaids sitting upon a rock in the open sea and said, “Nana, please look at this picture and come up with a story for it.” That picture sat on my desk for days, usually I could whip up a little story or poem off the top of my head, but this time around I was drawing a blank until one day it hit me…the three mermaids were like me, Woulda, Coulda and Shoulda, and so my journey began. I wrote a short story in verse about three mermaids with regrets. Kaleigh loved it and that was that, or so I thought. For the remainder of the summer I would return to that mermaid picture until one day it hit me, “why not put your stories in book form?” “Because you don’t have the guts to do it.” That was the answer I gave to myself, or perhaps it was me who was talking to the other two, either way I was faced with a dilemma, step out on a limb and see what I was capable of, or live in the shadows of expectations like I’d done my entire adult life.
NONSENSE OR NO SENSE:
I decided to take the bull by the horns or in this case the mermaid by the tail and write a children’s book. Now in the interest of full disclosure…I didn’t know the first damn thing about writing a book, much less getting it into print and then into the hands of others. So I just wrote and wrote, and then wrote some more, until I finally had a collection of poems and short stories that I was pleased with. Now the hard part began, how do I go about getting my words into book form? As my fingers hit the keyboard running, I scoured the internet to learn everything I could about indie publishing and landed on a platform I thought I could handle. Boy, was I wrong. I soon found I knew nothing about formatting, embedding font and aligning pages, let alone creating a cover. Once again I was stumped as I sat at my computer with my thighs still touching and feeling nothing but desperation. Just as I was about to give up, a flood gate of memories from my teens and all of the inadequacies I’d felt growing up engulfed me like a Venus Fly Trap. I was disappearing once again. I could either revert to the patterns of the past which had gotten me nowhere, or I could suck it up, put on my big girl pants and fight for a dream I knew nothing about…so I did.
In Oct. of 2013, I self-published a book, Nonsense and No Sense and Somewhere in Between and started the process of peddling my new found craft. Along the way I decided to write some more and even started an anti-bullying/kindness program called Sock Monkey Nation. In a year’s time I had appeared in print, local radio and television and was writing my heart out. I’d sold enough books to fund my anti-bullying program and started giving presentations at local schools in our area. Somewhere between dreaming and believing, I’d started achieving things I never dreamed I was capable of. This was my “metaphorical bra burning” moment that gave me a sense of liberation and left me hungry for more. MORE WHAT? That’s the kicker of finding yourself so late in the game, you’re always trying to play catch up with a past that is no longer attainable. I couldn’t turn back the clock, had no idea how to time travel, didn’t have the resources to have thigh liposuction and the list went on. For a brief period of time those damn mermaids Woulda, Coulda and Shoulda had shown me a good time, but now I felt like I was starving and drowning at the same time. I was hungry to do something more, and yet the thought of moving forward left me gasping for air. So I did what any mature intelligent woman does, I had one hell of a meltdown! I refer to this as my “fish sticks and tartar sauce” moment. When my grandkids were small, frustrated and angry I ‘d taught them to scream “fish sticks and tartar sauce” at the top of their lungs to express their dismay as opposed to taking the Lord’s name in vein or cussing. Unfortunately, on that particular day my Gordon Fisherman outburst wasn’t rated PG. How I wished for my Bea Arthur vest and multicolored platform shoes, the one time in my life where I totally felt all together and cool. Truth be told, even then my coolness was all in my head. This journey of self- discovery really sucked.
AARP and all that Crap:
My life once again became a routine, but this one involved writing and dabbling with screenplays. I was never going to be famous, but was feeling a wee bit more content. I’d survived menopause, my boobs were sagging, by thighs were touching and my ass dragged a little closer to the ground, but I was alive and that should have counted for something. My contentment was shorted lived. I soon started receiving monthly magazines from AARP where every cover profiled some celebrity who was still doing the Tango at the age of eighty, or had climbed a mountain at the age of ninety- two. I wasn’t yet sixty and was still trying to catch up with who I thought I should’ve been twenty years earlier. As far as I was concerned AARP was propaganda forced on us by the drug companies. I think the sole purpose of the magazine was to make people like me feel so anxious and depressed at our current state of affairs, that we headed straight to our doctor’s office begging for Prozac, Lexapro or Xanax. That deplorable magazine tried to sweetened the pot by offering a free AARP embroidered fanny back with each paid subscription. Two fanny packs later, I still couldn’t Tango and was so winded climbing a flight of stairs that I would’ve had a heart attack long before I reached the top of any mountain. If I was going to figure out who I was I’d better get moving. According to my calculations and some damn article I’d read in AARP, if I played my cards right I had another twenty-five years left this side of heaven.
Crap! I’d spent most of my adulthood trying to figure out who I was and where I was heading, now thanks to a stupid magazine and a free fanny pack I had a life expectancy time table to deal with too! Why wasn’t there a magazine like AARP for kids and teens that warned them to slow down, enjoy their childhood, forget the latest fad or create their own? The truth of the matter was this…being a grown up sucks and the process of getting there sucks even more. So in a nutshell the facts were before me, I had to fast track this journey, figure out what the hell I wanted out of life, grab it for a fleeting moment and then die. I knew my future tombstone would read, “She was born, she wandered, now she’s dead…The End” OMG…I was a modern day Moses wandering for forty years in search of …hell, that’s the problem. I didn’t have a clue what I was searching for. Moses was looking for the Promised Land, I on the other hand was still drifting aimlessly. I had only one option, well, make that two…I could dump the unfulfilled expectations of the past on the curb like the garbage I knew they were, or I could continue to drag them along, stinking up the rest of my life, which according to AARP was dwindling fast. This was one of those “fight or flight” moments and I finally decided to put on the gloves and take control of me, myself and I. Between the three of us, we should be able to win this battle.
The Rat’s Ass Principal:
Sick and lounging on the couch one day I found myself channel surfing. Not being an avid television watcher, I soon settled on an animal program that explained how some rats have adapted over the years to the point they no longer fear humans. Many of these rats have savagely bitten infants and children asleep in their beds. Finding the images too disturbing to watch I grabbed the remote to turn the channel, but not before one final image flashed before my eyes. A grown man woke in agonizing pain all because a huge rat had bitten him in the ass! I found myself caught between disbelief, and gut wrenching laughter. I think I need to explain why I found this man’s situation so amusing. I’ve always believed the word ass, when added with another descriptive word can accurately describe some individuals, many we know all too well. We’ve all known a lazy ass, crazy ass, stupid ass, wise ass, dumb ass and the list goes on and on. These are generally traits none of us want associated with our own persona, but I had to give kudos to the rat who’d bit the butt of a human. That rat had the guts to tackle something much bigger than himself. Talk about taking on the establishment. One little rodent took down “the big guy” by the seat of his pants, and in that instant the “rat’s ass” principal was born. Life was too short for me to waste time giving a “rat’s ass” what other’s thought about me. It was time for me to bite the butt of my own insecurities. New mantra… My life, my way!
The Tattoo:
To be perfectly honest I’ve never been a big fan of tattoos, even though both of my grown daughter’s sport a few. My biggest issue with getting a tattoo was finding something I’d want to adorn my body forever. I’ve never had a desire for the traditional butterfly or skull tattoo’s, and the thought of having an ex-husbands name on my body made me want to barf, so my skin remained inkless. On the flip side of the tattoo issue, I saw tattoo’s as little acts of rebellion. I guess as a woman who’d always followed the rules, a tattoo represented an inner free spirit who shouted. “It’s my skin to live in any damn way I please.” My problem was a simple one, I didn’t have the guts to rebel so the tattoo issue was a non- issue, or so I thought. My dad was having some serious health issues and I knew the day was coming when both of my parents would no longer be with me. At the age of fifty-nine I was fortunate to have both of them still alive. Having been a five generation baby, as were my daughters and grandchildren…family was important. It was while visiting my folks it hit me. I could live with their signatures on my body forever, a living legacy once they were gone.” The next time I visited I asked both of my parents to write “Love Always” and then the words Mom/Dad, respectively. They both laughed when I said I was going to have their handwriting tattooed on my inner forearm. As usual, nobody took me seriously. I was the dependable one, child whisperer, caregiver, and the boring child of the lot. Returning home I tucked the paper with my parent’s handwriting inside of a drawer, and to be honest forgot about it, so did everyone else. About four months had past and life was still dragging me along until one Saturday in August when I found myself looking in the mirror. I suddenly became angry at the poor sap who was looking back at me. “For God’s sake woman, snap out of it! If indeed you’ve only got another twenty years, move those flabby thighs and get on with it!” Here I was lecturing my own reflection about how she should live her life. At that exact moment it was as if I’d stepped into the mirror, and bitch slapped myself. The line in the sand had been drawn, a dual had been declared and now it was up for debate who would win, me or myself? I, on the other hand, would be the one who made the final call. In a matter of two hours I’d grabbed my husband, retrieved the paper from my underwear drawer and headed to the nearest tattoo parlor. Civil unrest was raging inside of me and I would be victorious. That’s putting a lot of pressure on a tattoo, but in my case it was the rebellious act I needed in order to win that battle. In my head I saw myself standing before the masses as I waved my tattooed forearm declaring… “I did it world, you didn’t think I would, but I did! What do ya think of me now?” In reality the response to my tattoo was not that dramatic, many were shocked I’d gone ahead and gotten a tattoo since it was so “unlike me,” … you know, the predictable one. Getting a tattoo was just the next step in reinventing myself and this time around it I was going to be whatever I wanted to be. I may have lacked a thigh gap but the truth was “I just didn’t give a rat’s ass!” As a Helen Reddy song of the 70’s ran through my head, I was ready to declare once and for all… “I am woman, hear me roar!”
Gills and a Fin:
It’s amazing how life changes for the better, when “you” change the way you look at it. I’d completely turned my thinking upside down. Instead of thinking from the perspective of others, and how they felt, I began to put “me,” front and center. I know that may sound egotistical and selfish, but in reality it was just the opposite. I’d been a chameleon for most of my life, fitting into the surrounding environment just trying to survive, and by doing so my relationships were never one hundred percent authentic. I finally understood what people meant when they said someone needed to “grow a set.” Believe it or not I looked up the word “ballsy” to see if it actually existed, and to my surprise…It did! The definition was spot on for my transformation. Ballsy meant “to be tough and courageous,” all of the things I wasn’t, but wanted to be. It was time for me to grow a set of my own, and that meant reinventing myself. I stopped saying “yes” to things just because that’s the response others expected of me. I learned that the word “NO” doesn’t have to be seen as a negative. A child at an early age grasps the power of saying no when they don’t want to do something against their will. Apparently I’d missed that memo early in my life. I was a pleaser by nature, or maybe out of necessity, either way I was going to start speaking my mind and that included saying “no” more often. I was almost sixty years old and I shouldn’t have to explain why I was making changes in my life. Sometimes a person doesn’t want to do something, “just because” …and that’s the point I was at in my life. Because my grandkids were no longer tiny, I decided I didn’t want to haul out every holiday bin and decorate every inch of our home. Just because I’d done it a certain way since the birth of my first child in 1977, it didn’t mean I had to do it the same way until the day I died. If my grandkids didn’t care if the Halloween blow ups were standing out in the yard, or that Nana wasn’t staying home to hand out candy, why should it matter to anyone else? When things, routines or rituals cease to bring joy and feel more like a chore, maybe it’s time to step back and stop doing them. Why? Just Because, and I did. I’d like to say everyone was on board with the new me, but quite frankly, many were not. This new outspoken and ballsy version met with a bit of resistance, but I’d come too far and it felt wonderful. I’d finally grown a set of gills that allowed me to breathe freely, and now it was time for me to sprout a fin and release my inner mermaid. I fully understood we all possess the power to reinvent ourselves as we mature, change, and grow. Standing before the mirror my reflection confirmed, my life was far from over. “This is my time, my season in the sun.” I declared as I headed toward the open water; a middle-aged mermaid with chubby thighs, who would finally take her rightful spot upon that rock. I could hardly wait to knock my regrets, Woulda, Coulda and Shoulda to the bottom of the sea, just because, that’s where they needed to be. Damn it feels good to finally be me