Niceville, Florida

saying good bye to Florida...

Yesterday, I went to Niceville High School, the school I graduated from in 1972. 37 years ago. There were 2 young women in the parking lot chattering about the day and I asked them to take my picture in front of the school. Was I ever that young?

I only attended this High School for 1 year. It was a pretty awesome year. Being the only one of my friends with a car, I was the designated driver all the time.
I met my husband that year at Eglin Federal Prison, neither of us were inmates. I was part of a 21 member chorus - 4 civilians (suprano, alto, bass and tenor), 17 federal prisoners. (That would be 2 females, 19 males. I was 18.) He was a friend of one of the other civilians.

So yesterday, I crammed a year of memories into 2 hours and took a side trip back in time. The interesting thing is there was so many things that were the same and this triggered memories long ago filed away - like some crazy google search on random words.

I remembered :
being editor of the literary magazine
being kissed by someone I loved
the cheering section at my graduation
the death of a good friend in a car accident
my sister taking my car in the middle of the day with my books in it
traveling around the panhandle (sorry, emerald coast) on the prison bus performing at churches
all the laughter - swimming in the afternoon, driving too fast, packing 7 people in my Pinto (yes...my pinto with the eight track tape player)
playing Led Zeppelin too loud.

and what I felt was grateful for all of it, and for all of those people who touch me and shaped me and shared their lives with me then. I don't miss those times because they are incorporated into my being, into the way I see the world and to some extent into the way the world see me.

I will probably never return to Niceville, Florida. But in so many ways it will never leave me.

On the Road Already

I so want to be on the road. I have places to go and people to see.

One of the most difficult things about aventures is something always has to be left behind. And I have tried to leave this place more than once and it keeps drawing me back. I want to be gone. I want to say goodbye and wave sweetly and feel the pang in stomach. Because this is the only way that I can get to the exhileration of starting something new.

This starting something new has kept me attached to SFC for so long. Every sememster new students, new classes, something else to learn, something else to write. But that seems to be gone. We are using other peoples stuff in the classroom and there is no time for the exhileration of creation.

I love teaching. I love new classes - starting the process of making individual students a learning community, a group with a common goal - learn (or even just getting through this class). I like setting up situations where they have to depend on one another rather than me.

Sooner or later I will be off. I just need to be in the moment now. To drink in all of the love.

Mostly I love the process of taking on new information - learning from the students, learning so I can teach them, sorting out the important foundational parts. I will miss this. I will miss the students.

There is something very seductive about watching a person redefine themselves. Starting off timid, or angry and finding something inside themselves, through education, that they did not realize was there. Once you are a part of that it is hard to walk away from it and it redefined me.

Is that your final answer?

One of the most difficult things about being an adult with ADD is that every time I think I have decided about something, a better idea comes up and I'm off in a new direction. This looks strangely like I don't have my shit together to most of the people who love and care about me.

And being and extrovert with ADD is even worst because I am actually communicating all of my thought process with the outside world who is hoping desperately that I will "make a decision already." It is part of the process. One of the hardest things for me is that everyone wants to weigh in on one option or another and they all have very good ideas about why that option is better then the rest but mostly they don't understand that I just need to hear all of the options out loud so that I can decide.

Then the cycle starts: thought comes into head, not fully formed thought comes out of mouth, unsuspecting audience feels the need to make contribution, thought gets distorted, goes back into head as new thought, and back out of mouth.

This entire situation is exaggerated by the fact that I am contemplating (and doing) things that many of them find a little outrageous. But in all of this they seem to still love me.

In My Life

It has taken me 25 years to put together this life in Gainesville and I am taking it apart in weeks. The truth is I have been taking it apart for the last few years a little at a time.

But these last few weeks have been the hardest. Trying to decide what parts to take, what parts to leave. Saying goodbye, and not know if it is the last time. I love so many people in Gainesville and have been loved. It will take a long time to create these types of relationship again in my life.

In My Life - Beatles

"There are places I'll remember all my life
though some have changed.
Some forever not for better
Some are gone and some remain

All these places had their moments
with lovers and friends that went before
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all..."

Can't say it any better than that.

Do You Remember The Time?

I played a game with my children and now with my granddaughters where during an unusual or scary or interesting event we pretend that the event has already taken place.

One of my favorite examples of this is what we now refer to as the Brooklyn Bridge in New Orleans. Brooklyn is my step-granddaughter. We were in New Orleans, in heavy traffic, and she got very sick in the car. We were on a bridge and pulled over onto a very narrow shoulder and Brooklyn preceded to be very sick all over the side of the bridge. As a 6 year old child she was mortified.

Arielle, recognizing Brooklyn's embarrassment, started - "Do you remember the time we were in New Orleans and Brooklyn got sick all over the side of the bridge? We were all really worried about her but she was fine."

"Yeah," chimed in Emily, "she messed up that bridge - it was Brooklyn's bridge."
"After that I felt fine. " concluded Brooklyn with all three girls laughing and the embarrassment of the situation was gone.

The simplicity of this game makes it very powerful. It removes the fear, drama, confusion, embarrassment from a situation. In unique situations, it provides an opportunity to deliberately record an event as it is happening. But most importantly, with children, it gives them an opportunity to identify and express their feelings.

Even when I am on the road by myself and something happens that is making me uncomfortable, I find it comforting to write myself out of the situation - like "remember the time we were on the way to Tennessee and we were in a really bad storm and we thought that we were going to drive right off the side of hill but we didn't and when I finally stopped I got out of the car I kissed the ground."

I offer you this today because I have been looking at old (printed) photos all days. I remember some of amazing, exciting, scary, delicious, touching, surprising... times that are documented by these images and I look forward to making sure that I don't miss any of the "Do you remember the time" moments ahead.

Z

Grief

Grief - seems to be a hole in my chest through which a piece of my soul has been ripped.

There has been so much grief around me this year. Most of the loss in my life has been due to relocation rather than death. But this year... Friends losing parents, lovers, spouses, grandparents. Much of this has to do with my age and I acknowledge that there is much more to come but this is the beginning. In my circle of friends, I am the only one who still has both parents.

I lost my grandmother, Lois, in 2009. She was 97. I knew her well, not just as my grandmother but also as Lois. I know she missed drinking beer with pizza. I know that she believed that her twin was more likable than she was. Knowing Lois, was one of the graces of my life.

In our lives, we meet people and we know who they are by the way they impact our lives. We often don't realize that they are people outside of that. One of the things that I learned from my grandmother was that I wanted my children to know me as more than their mother. I wanted them to recognize that I was the subject of my own life not just the object of theirs.

In doing this I think that my children also understand that they are more than the sum of all of their relationships. More than a husband or wife, a son or daughter, or friend. We can try to define ourselves by the others in our lives but we still have a responsibility to ourselves and in the end that is all there is. We pass from being wife, mother, sister, friend ... to being. It is sad if no one witnessed "us" outside the frame of our relationship with them.

It is important for me to stand back and see my children as the adults they are beyond and outside of me or I miss something pretty amazing. I have been blessed with the opportunity to know my mom and dad to listen to the things that are important to them. Lois taught me the importance of this by sharing herself with me.

As I start on this next journey in my life another generation of relationships is developing and I am excited to have permission to be part of the day to day events. Even so, I am already mourning the loss of the people I leave behind.

I know that as their lives continue here I will miss witnessing it. What I want to say most is how grateful I am for all of the pieces of these lives that have been shared with me. I am blessed by the experiences I take with me and that these experiences have shaped and touched me.

Thanks,  Lois, for life, for being my grandmother, for sharing yourself with me. I pay it forward in your name.