Category: Marriage

The Angel Made Me Do It

Dare to dream!

If there’s a will there’s a way!

These used to be my favorite clichés growing up. I miss that sometimes now that I’m growing old and cynical. I miss that crazy big picture dreaming like we do as kids with seemingly the expanse of the world and infinite days ahead of us. My mom really did often repeat that we could do or be anything we wanted.

Prima ballerina even though you’re short and curvy? Sure, why not!

I never really believed it, but I do agree that to dream big is a good thing, and not just for kids. The older we get though, the more that critic steps in even before his queue, the inner voice of impossibility. A necessary ally, no doubt, in his strict adherence to the practical and well-tested norms.

Let’s call him Jack, from another of the well-worn clichés, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

What if we put Jack in the box for now, where he prefers to be anyway, and we enjoyed some precious time without him?

It seems like a lot of folks have dreams they would call big that center around money. They want a new house, for example. And that’s true for me, too, I would like a new house.

But I think of that as a small dream. When we first moved here we didn’t expect we’d stay in this house. It’s not where we would choose to have a house on this property, and it’s not the kind of house we would choose as far as style either. We thought we could make this one into a ‘project house’ where we did all our work and hobbies, then we could have another small one more suited to us, off the road, on a more picturesque part of the property with views all around.

Then after making so many improvements over the years and spending so much time, money, energy on the surroundings, we downsized that dream. Jack won that one, as usual.

But that doesn’t mean he’ll always win, right? Back in the box he goes!

Dream BIG! It’s not that easy. I used to have lots of big dreams and many of them I wrote down and some of them have come to pass. At least partially.

Like, I always said I wanted a small house on a big piece of land. I just had no idea that would be in rural Texas, or there would be the whole menagerie attached. I was thinking more like an acre in Corsica or Guadeloupe overlooking the sea.

Guadeloupe, French West Indies 1997

Sometimes I dream we could still do that if we really wanted. But, Jack doesn’t have to bother getting out of his box for that one, that’s how little chance of it there is.

But, what if we could bring some of what I love about that dream into this dream we’re already creating?

A spring-fed pond, that would be a good start. No, make that a lake!

There are properties all around us that may soon be for sale. We’d buy them all!

And then what? (Back in the box, Jack!)

I heard a friend talk behind my back once a few years ago when she first visited here. Directed at her hubby, as we were driving them in the tractor to their lodging in the still-unfinished cabin we built, she said, “Why would anyone need so much property?”

I didn’t, but wanted to say, “But, you see, but we would have, could have, SO much more!” Why not?!

Hubby used to joke about our paltry 50 acres, “In Texas, 50 acres buys you a front yard.”

It’s not a matter of need, obviously. How much land does the Queen of England own?

It’s not even about what one might accomplish with a few hundred (or a few thousand) acres. I don’t imagine we’d aim to accomplish much at all. Jack would want to put a name on it of course—a nature preserve, or a dude ranch, or a future botanical garden, or a (God forbid!) another of the popular ATV parks.

I think in my biggest dream I’d invite some cherished friends to our rural sanctuary, with the spring fed pond (lake!) and wooded paths strewn with pine needles, and secret herb gardens, where we’d enjoy some homemade wine on a fine pergola made of bamboo watching the birds . . .

And the chemtrails.

Fuck you, Jack!

Is It Life, Or Is It Politics?


Money sucks the life out of Life.

While folks argue about what is life, Life has become a fucking clown show.

It’s the conquering aristocracy who calculate their conceptions to the sky clock.  

Normal folk had sex. And had sex, maybe even daily, maybe even from puberty to death.  And the women drank tea each month until they decided not to anymore.  Then they had a baby.  Worked for centuries.

Then came in The Nobles.  The Church. The State. The Medics. Not necessarily in that order.  All there in order to provide protection.

That is, each from the other.

When the nobles, the church, the state, the medics, decided the peasants were having too many babies, or too much sex, or too much leisure, they stepped in.  In order to provide protection.

And then when they needed more soldiers to fight in their future battles, or more souls on the lands they just conquered, they dictated to their peasants, “Have more babies for our nation’s-religion’s-tribe’s greatness!”  

And when they decided once again there were too many babies they dictated to their peasants, “Your babies will be cursed with the plague!” That’s the modern equivalent of “Your babies must be sterilized!” Or, “Your germ-factory children are killing Grandma!”

Or, “Global climate change is caused by overpopulation!”

In the meantime they kill off all the witches who know all the safe brews.  Always, in order to provide protection.

They cry about the horrors of unplanned pregnancy!  Or, the horrors of killing God’s creation! In tandem. In concert.

They leave out the facts.  A woman could potentially have approximately 1, 233 children in her lifetime, according to God.  That’s an approximation, of course.  

A man, good heavens, we’d need a mathematician to calculate that! Harems exist for a reason.

Everything we know about human reproduction originates in animal husbandry.  And it’s absolute nonsense when science and culture claim that all women in a tribe will cycle together with the moon.  

What sort of evolutionary sense does that even make?

The ‘Red Tent’ was always about the tea.

Arrested Development

I often feel sorry for men. And those boys who try to become men, few as they may be nowadays.

I remember when my dad started writing poetry in middle age, in order to potentially ward off another divorce. It was a phase that didn’t last long and I don’t remember if his poetry was any good, but I remember being impressed by that effort. First he converted for her, got baptized and everything, then he attempted to swim, via words, the seas of emotion, alone, at high tide, with no training.

Doesn’t surprise me much. He’s always been impressive that way. Exactly that sort of way, actually. While dismally unimpressive in other ways.

I do understand that’s called being human.

But it bugs me this isn’t something we’re allowed to talk about, the being human part. The warts and all part. Because the sugar coating gets nauseating after a while. Besides, it’s not healthy, in that where’s the broccoli sort of way.

This is not allowed in my FOO (family of origin) and I know for certain, it’s not just mine. Broccoli hits that table only soggy and drowning in artificial cheese sauce.

Somehow over the generations there’s been a great divide happening between many aspects of familial and societal life, and leaving all conspiracy theories aside for a moment as to how that’s come to pass, there are clear and present repercussions being felt by the glaring lack of healthy masculinity being demonstrated currently in our culture.

Dad’s poetry efforts didn’t pan out. Too little, too late, I suspect. That pesky human error thing—hindsight, tunnel vision, any one of the 7 deadly sins—or whatever.

As flawed as I’m able to paint him, which depending on my mood might go pretty dark, it’s the unwashable tones that I prefer, whether that spectrum proves dark or light.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the skill, or the distance, to paint him well, to do him justice, warts and all, not even in words. But, someday.

All I feel able to do now is to demonstrate those parts of him I admire, and always have and always will, which comes down to pointing out their antithesis.

Who is Dad not?

This matters enough for me to post about publicly because there are a whole lot of heroes out there, but you’ll never learn about them until you turn off the TV and really tune in to what higher minds are trying to tell us, because it is becoming increasingly less common knowledge than it should be.

https://youtu.be/Mavj0N_gCQQ

Examples of positivity masculinity exist and were once diligently cultivated. For every accusation of power abuse there is a man who gifted power, maybe even a dozen of them.

https://youtu.be/B930AKBr4E4

For every accusation of narcissism there is a man who dispersed his glory voluntarily upon those close to him.

For every accusation of arrogance, selfishness, egoism, betrayal, there is a man who knew, above all else, that what it takes to be a man is as tough as it is simple: never accept arrested development.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” -Theodore Roosevelt

For Better Or Worse

This year Hubby and I passed our 17th anniversary Test of Marital Bliss, more or less devoted, mostly minus the bliss.

While at first blush this post might read like something of a roast of us both, I mean it actually to be a tribute to us both, to our loving growth, as well as a bit of advice to newlyweds, who will most certainly ignore it, bless their young hearts.

“Never go to bed angry,” was my grandfather’s advice, at my first wedding. That marriage lasted just shy of five years. While I did learn some great life lessons from Grandpa, that particular one proved pretty useless.

I’d rewrite it now as something close to the exact opposite: Never try to resolve any issue while angry. What better way to overcome your anger? A good night’s sleep.

Exit Glacier, Alaska, stock photo

My second attempt at marital bliss showed far more potential immediately. I’ve told this story of Hubby and I many times before, because it’s a great story. When he first proposed to me, in a tent at Exit Glacier in Alaska, we had just high-tailed it out of a precarious and perhaps even dangerous situation in the wee hours of the morning from the tourist boat where he’d been working for nearly a decade previously and had invited me to join him that summer season.

My presence there and his devotion to me was apparently causing a serious rift between him and his good friend/employer.

We found ourselves sneaking off the boat pre-dawn, strategically, while everyone else was out, because Hubby had lost all confidence in his boss’ professionalism and maybe even his sanity after an extremely inappropriate altercation the night before.

It reads more like fiction than real life, I do realize. But, isn’t that often how life goes? As we pulled out of Prince William Sound in the compact rental car stuffed with the duffel bags of all his possessions, we drove straight into a glorious and totally unexpected rainbow. Cross my heart, no exaggeration at all, across the valley as the sun rose above the mountain pass was the most gorgeous rainbow I’d ever witnessed.

I barked and awed and carried on enthusiastically to a mostly apprehensive man trying to hold it together during this incredibly bold and unprecedented move.

How could it not be auspicious, a wonderful omen, I raved, on and on?! After all, it was the most exquisite rainbow I’d ever seen. How could that be totally by chance?!

That is, until a few days ago.

On my birthday, as Hubby was flying offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, as he’s been doing for about a decade now, he took this shot from his helicopter.

Gorgeous, auspicious, but, he didn’t even think to send it to me at the time. That’s the real point of this post.

He took this shot because he knew I’d love it, that’s for sure. He’s not the synchronicity believer that I am, he thinks celebrating birthdays is for kids and he’s not nearly as impressed with rainbows as I am, clearly. I doubt he shared this shot with his offshore crew, because I doubt there are any among them who are so eager to gush over rainbows in the Gulf.

I requested ages ago he take more photos while offshore, but I get it, he’s got a job to do out there, he’s not a tourist, and no one’s paying him to take photos.

But a couple of days ago when I asked if he had more good photos, he sent this one. I laughed out loud! I said, REAL photos please! NOT fake unicorn CGI gonna-fool-my-wife type photos! How dare you make fun of my rainbow love!

He swore up and down it’s real and totally un-retouched. And I gazed at it, truly amazed, stunned, in true AWE for at least a solid minute.

Then I said: “Oh My God! How on earth could you have not sent me this photo on my birthday, since it says right there that’s when you took it?!”

He looked at me like a deer in highlights for an extended moment, until I laughed. I shook my head, rolled my eyes, and laughed some more.

This was exactly the sort of thing, early in our marriage, that would’ve set me off. Proof, right there, front and center, of his thoughtlessness and insensitivity! Oh and how I felt that enticing tug of self-righteousness, don’t get me wrong!

But the wisdom of 19 years of loving this man, 17 years in wedlock-down, threw me, suddenly and unequivocally, into what I think is a State of Atlas Shrugs. She said, “So you got it a week late, and in a totally off-hand manner, but still, you got it. You really gonna cause a stink about that?”

And the still small voice of Wisdom replied, “No, ma’am!”

And the Reason of the middle-aged woman, now a Devoted Gardener for a decade, well accustomed to planting seeds three times before the right time strikes, realized the greater truth in that moment, beyond the banal ‘perfect’ timing desires of us mere mortals: Nature has a timetable that doesn’t match your Personal or Man-made calendar.

DUH!

And, better late than never!