In praise of quirky

I have a friend who is all the things I’d expect in someone I love to love. She works in a library. She loves to cook, travel, garden, entertain, and read. She shares my obsessions with podcasts and Internet shopping. Her favorite human is her husband. We talk on Voxer every day, unless one of us is far away from Wifi, and then we pout (well, I do).

She cares about many of the same things I do, too: politics, social justice, spirituality. Her favorite way to unwind is to be outside, hands in the dirt or buns on a bicycle seat. See why we talk on Voxer every day? We speak the same life.

One of my favorite things about her is, honestly, a quirk. She adores 1950s, ‘60s, and 70s sci-fi, especially the original Star Trek series, but also other television shows, movies, and books that I can’t remember the names of because when she talks about them, my mind wanders.

This is her quirk. Her unexpected thing that doesn’t fit with the rest of her. It’s an oddity about her that I don’t share but I love all the same.

I was thinking about this the other day because I think our weird little quirks, the unexpected bits that don’t fit all that well with the rest of the package, are fascinating. And necessary.

Consider another friend of mine, a woman I know through a young woman’s group I used to co-lead. She’s a very tall, natural blond, all legs and arms and long hair. Stunning and smart and stylish, she is a brilliant speech pathologist. And never without a suitor.

Her favorite past-time? Fishing. When the topic comes up, she whips out her phone and starts scrolling through her big-catch pics, her face alight in pleasure. So quirky.

I think about my brother who is master of the quirk. Dude works in IT, traveling all over the continent to boss people and their money around. He’s lots of things I’d expect in a single successful man, especially one who lives for adventure. Any physical activity draws him in, especially if terrifying. His motto is, “It’s not worth doing if doesn’t scare the crap out of me.” (Interesting side note that Dude is getting married in two months. Hmmm.)

And yet? Dude’s dining room table is covered with paint brushes, canvases, paper towels, and dozens and dozens of tubes of paint. Everything on his walls (and some of mine) are his creation. So freakin’ quirky.

Or consider another friend who blogs and mommies and remodels—and adores major league baseball.

I’ve decided that this quirk business is important. Quirks roughen up the evenness of the expected. They are the bumps in an otherwise familiar terrain, and without them, we’d be perfectly okay—but far less fun.

Mine?

I don’t know. I mean, I had my dinosaur phase. When the first Jurassic Park was released, I had a brief obsession with pre-historic animals. My friends’ mouth hung open while I spouted on about velociraptors’ diets and mating habits. This quirk, blessedly, was short-lived.

For the most part, though, I think I’m a pretty predictable human being. Now and again, I’ll do something off the wall like agree to a 350-mile bike ride, but rest assured, that idea wasn’t mine. I know a lot about the Bronte sisters (and really all things British lit.), but doesn’t that fit a little too nicely with my education and vocation? Yes. So not all that quirky.

Other little oddities, like writing poems and binge-watching BBC also aren’t all that far off the track. Crosswords and jigsaw puzzles? Not weird in context of the rest of my package.

Y’all.

I need a quirk.

What’s your quirk? Please share. #inpraiseofquirky

Haiku diet

Losing weight is a lot like writing haiku (“haiku,” by the way is both the singular and plural form of the word, which I totally had to look up).

A haiku is a three-line Japanese poetry form that must stick to a strict number of syllables in each line. Lines one and three equal five syllables each, and line two gets seven.

Like this:

You rise, walk the dog,

Start the coffee. The bed, now

Cool … level … lulls me.

The restriction of the syllables is both a mental challenge and a frustrating annoyance. On the one hand, writing the barest of bones forces the best, right, most perfect word choice. There’s freedom in the boundaries. “No, I can’t use the word raspberry here; berry will have to do.”

But on the other hand, raspberry is a great word. It’s a better word than berry, much more specific and evocative. The rasp suggests the tartness of the fruit itself and the sensation of the seeds poking at my teeth.

It’s a great three-syllable word, and if I want to use it in a haiku, I have to give up a syllable or two somewhere else. I can skip an article or a verb even, but what I cannot do is exceed the syllable limits. Just can’t. It’s a rule.

And so dieting.

When I stepped onto the scale this morning, the display read 125.6. About eight pounds ago, I decided I wanted to weigh 125. I like 125. I can wear all the clothes in my closet at 125. Nothing pokes or prods or pinches. I look a little taller. And, frustratingly, I am treated better. My peers and superiors and even my teen rascals all respond to me in a more open, friendly way when I’m slim.

I know this. I have weighed 190 pounds. I have weighed 105 pounds. The way I look affects how people treat me.

I’ve spent the last, oh four years, telling myself weight doesn’t matter. I read Melissa Toler’s blog, and I agree wholeheartedly with Megan Tietz every time she says all bodies are beautiful. Wholeheartedly. So as my weight crept up and up, just little bits at time, I said, “Oh, look! Here’s a cupcake right here on my hip!” I’ve eaten and laughed and felt full of joy.

I told myself that I couldn't lose weight post-menopause. I’ve looked at women my age with fuller middles and done my best to deem them dignified, not frumpy. That worked sometimes, but I'm ashamed to say, not often. 

I’ve looked, too, at thin, thin women dying their hair and injecting their foreheads and taking nightly barre classes. Occasionally, I experiences a pang of envy, but mostly I think, “Oh, sad. They are not enjoying their own lives.”

I can't really identify with women with thick or thin hips.  I don't want to throw all caution aside and just decide once and for all to be pleasantly plump (it doesn't feel at all pleasant to me), but I have no desire to obsess about my weight, either. The voices in my head nag, even when I can't find me in any of the women I look at. I argue endlessly with them. I tell them self-discipline is not the same thing as obsession, and that I don’t need their stupid rules, and my body is beautiful no matter what the scale says.

But I don’t like scootching certain skirts and jeans aside in the closet. I don’t like worrying what Matt thinks (or doesn’t think). I don’t like avoiding mirrors any more than I like seeking them out. I don’t like indulging one day and starving the next and watching my ever-thickening middle spill over the sides of my pants.

I agree with Melissa Toler. Our diet culture is killing us. The shame alone could fell a giant. The pre-packaged diet foods are trash. The images on the covers of magazines are lies. There is no life, no joy, in finding self-worth in a perfectionist push towards beauty that feeds only on comparison.

At the same time, there is no joy in daily over-indulgence, in defiantly ignoring what my body needs. Just as surely as Snackwell cookies will kill me, so too, will McDonald’s. Lugging around extra weight hurts, literally. And emotionally, too. It acts like a barrier between who I am and what I want.

And so, I am writing a haiku on my body. I’m giving it boundaries. I’m choosing to choose less.

I have no illusions that weighing 125 pounds will heal the decades of body image wounds I can’t seem to let go of. But I can say this: I am learning to like my body a little bit. It has limitations, but I can lean into those limitations, if not with gratitude, at least awareness and acceptance.

Year of the Body? I’m listening. What else have you to say?

The Pits

Family Camp.

I’d never heard of such a thing until I joined the staff at my church a handful of years ago. “Family” and “camp” are not two words I’d willingly butt up against each other, and frankly, they are not two of my favorite words at all.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my family. But like most of you, the images and feelings the word conjures up are not all fairies and rainbows. And camp? Ugh. That’s the place, where, as a kid, I fit in even less than in real life. There are not a lot of kids with their noses in books at camp. Not a lot of kids with severe pollen allergies at camp. Not a lot of kids afraid to swim or so nearsighted, they have to sleep with their glasses on so they don’t trip the minute they crawl out of their sleeping bag (hypothetically speaking).

So when my boss started talking about the need for Family Camp volunteers, I didn’t instantly throw my hand up in the air and yell, “Pick me! Pick me!”

It turns out, Family Camp is sort of like the cruise version of camp. The campers show up at pre-arranged activities (or not), go off on their own to canoe or swim (or not), eat generously portioned meals that accommodate gluten-free, dairy-free, and meat-free needs (or not), and just generally play away from home for a couple of days.

There are kids at Family Camp who spend the weekend with their nose in a book, as well as adventurous monkeys who tackle the ropes course and Wet ‘n Wild-style pool slide. Plenty of kids-only activities create a bit of respite for parents now and again, but overall, the idea is togetherness. It’s all very kumbaya. (Yes, I’m a cynic. Family Camp is great. Folks love it. I’m still a cynic.)

But frankly, I think the kids and their parents are all missing out on the true glory of Family Camp: work crew.

Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.

Running Family Camp—the actual three days folks attend—demands a volunteer staff of thirty to fifty people. Some of those folks work on programming (otherwise known as entertainment), but most of the volunteers are the grunts who set up the dining hall, serve food, and wash dishes.

And two of those grunts are Matt and me. And we love it. As in L-O-V-E it.

Weird, right?

The first year we volunteered, we worked the dining hall. It was exhausting. Imagine this: three times a day, a room that seats three hundred-ish people has to be completely cleaned, top to bottom, set up for full-service meals right down to the last salad fork, and then bussed after each meal.

Oh, and the dining hall folks also serve all the food.

Oh. My. GAWD.

I couldn’t move at the end of the day, barely able to crawl into my bunk in the Siesta Key cabin, Matt sprawled into an upper bunk in the dude hut next door. But still, we both liked it. We liked that there was a massive amount of work to do that did not involve a spreadsheet or a meeting. Our “clients” were all in a good mood. The food was plentiful and cooked by someone named Not Me. And it was impossible not to feel an enormous sense of accomplishment looking at a sparkling dining room that was one hundred percent set up by Matt, me, a couple of other adults, and a whole big bunch of sleepy teenagers.

Good stuff.

So the next year, we were disappointed to learn that we were moving to The Pits. In restaurant parlance, this is known as the dish ring, but at Family Camp? The Pits.

And Lord help us, we loved that even more. We spent three days scraping and spraying and loading enormous racks of ketchup and syrup encrusted plates into a commercial grade dishwasher. We got so soaked with steam and sweat and food bits, we had to change our clothes after every meal. Our fingers and toes stayed pruney.

But we loved it. So much, that Matt signed us up for the next year, too.

And so it was that I just spent three days of my (MY!) spring break shoulder to shoulder with Matt plus four young teachers, singing Disney tunes at the top of my lungs and yelling stuff like, “ARE THOSE TRAYS DONE SOAKING?” and “WHOA! WHOA! THE HOBART IS JAMMED!”

I am not even exaggerating, y’all.

Family Camp.

I wonder why we do it, of course. The upside seems slight. Although I get a great workout, I end up gaining weight (did I mention the plentiful food?). Sleep is fitful when sharing a cabin with a dozen or so acquaintances-slash-strangers. The place is out in the boonies, so I can’t access Instagram. And I miss my dog.

But still.

There is something terribly rewarding about unplugging from my normal life and washing filthy dishes for three days. It’s inexplicable, really. I don’t go looking for tough labor in my own home. I have my own housekeeper, for crying out loud. And it’s not like Family Camp affords me the opportunity to connect with nature because I spend the whole weekend either in The Pits or catching a nap in my bunk.

I’ve thought a lot about this, and I think it boils down to this: I see immediate results of the work of my hands. It’s why Matt likes to mow the lawn. In less than an hour, he sees remarkable before and after. The same is true of a steamy tiled room piled literally to the ceiling with dirty dishes. Two hours later, all is clean and neatly tucked away. How often, in my work and my relationships, do I get a front-row seat to transformation?

Almost never.

I’d like to say we volunteer at Family Camp so we can provide a safe place for families to learn to communicate with and enjoy each other. Blah blah blah. That’d be a lie. I mean, really. Family Camp is great and all. But if the time spent was about joining God in restorative work, I’d pick a different way to do that. Jesus didn’t really talk a lot, that I know of, about families spending time together. I mean, He did, sort of, when he taught us about loving and serving each other. But he spoke more about widows and orphans and otherwise outcast folks (and, to be sure, there lots of adopted kiddos at Family Camp, some from impoverished countries and some with special needs and some with both—so there’s that).

I’m off track. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t go to Family Camp because I sense a deep spiritual calling to go support families in Ocklawaha, Florida. There’s no holiness in dishes, as far as I’m concerned. Many spiritual guides I love would vehemently disagree with me, but I'm just not there yet. It's a journey.

What I think is this: the simplicity of hard labor is, all by itself, gloriously beautiful. There is such peace and symmetry in knowing my job is the soaker sinks and your job is scraper and his job is put away. At one point, I told Matt (no lie), “I could do this every day for the rest of my life.” And I meant it.

Feet moving, arms aching, dirty dishes ever coming, clean dishes ready to go back out to the dining room. Over and over again. My brain settles and soothes. It’s like sleeping with my eyes open. Except for the part about the Disney songs.

It’s the weirdest thing, I know. Hard to explain.

But I bet you my bottom dollar I’ll be at Family Camp soaking up the suds come this time next year.

Meltdown

I recently posted this on Facebook, along with a cute pic of my grandgirls eating pink frosted donuts in their PJs:

When I keep my grandgirls, I have two non-negotiables: safety and rest. That means pretty much everything else goes. Sprinkle-donuts for breakfast? Why, yes, Taking a bubble bath instead of going to school on time? Duh.

Yesterday at Animal Kingdom (which had a lot of moments of not feeling safe, so Gramma was a little bit of a mess), a cast member pointed at Brooklyn's face and said to me, "Umm, I think she's got some, you know, maybe chocolate on her face?" I looked down at my ice cream-smeared granddaughter, who was grinning like a fool, and I looked back at the cast member and said, "Yep! She sure does!" Did I wipe it off? Nah. (eventually)

So. They pick their own outfits, which make them look like extras in a clown show. They eat popsicles in the bathtub. They change their princess panties anytime they feel like it. We watch too many episodes of Strawberry Shortcake, and we eat pizza picnic style on the living room floor.

If they turn out to be irresponsible, self-centered adults who refuse to put their shoes on without help? Not my fault, man. That's on their parents. I am FUN GRAMMA. HEAR! ME! ROAR!

What I didn’t post is this:

These kids scare the living crap out of me. Kennedy is impulsive (code for “not thinking before doing totally ridiculous things like taking her daddy’s scissors out of his desk and screaming, while running,, ‘I want to cut things, GRAMMA!’”), and Brooklyn has a hot temper, all too ready to feel wronged at the injustices a two-year old suffers. Like having to wear clothes.

I’m not kidding when I say I get angry. Like angry enough that I have to give myself a time-out in the bathroom because I’m shaking, and I don’t want to say something hurtful or pick up a thrashing body less gently than I absolutely must.

So I step over the wailing kid and I snatch the scissors from the hand that is flying by and I go stand in the bathroom, shaking and sweating and willing my breathing to

slow

down.

If Matt is nearby, he says helpful things like, “They miss their mom,” or “Let’s try a distraction.” If he’s not nearby, I keep my hands moving, hoping that picking up tiny stinky socks or wiping down the counters will return balance to the force. Sometimes that works, and I remember to laugh at my little nutcases. I remember that I have the power to choose my reaction, even if I do not have the power of control.

And that’s really what all my fear and trembling is about: control. How much I have. How little I have. How terrified I am.

I stayed with my little ones for a few days recently so Mom and Dad could get a little vacation. Here’s what happened at 11:15 p.m. the first night. I woke up to hear Brooklyn wimpering. Somewhere between that first wimper and 11:20 p.m., she delaminated. She roared and screamed and hit and flailed and screeched, and every suggestion I made meant to sooth her was met with full-frontal rage.

I held her through much of this, rocking and singing and assuring her all was okay. When I set her down for just a second because our combined perspiration was making her to slippery to safely hold, she ran as far away from me as she could and then fell down sobbing.

It was awful. I realized what she wanted—let’s be super specific here—was not me. I was right. Matt came in a few minutes later with her sippy cup and a piece of watermelon (her favorite), and she instantly quieted. I scooped her up and asked, “Should we put Owl Baby back in your bed?” She hiccupped and nodded. “Do you want to lie down with Owl Baby in your bed?” Another nod and sticky arms wrapped around my neck for the walk back to the room she shares with sissy.

I laid her down gently gently gently, whispering, “I love you” over and over. She curled around her baby doll like a little roly poly bug, but then glared up at me one last time. “Covers ON, Gramma!” she bellowed. Yes, love. Here you go. Blankie right up to your tiny chin. Sleep well, angel.

And then I stayed awake for the next, oh, three hours, heart pounding.

What in the hell was that?

The next day, Matt and I talked about what happened. He reminded me again of the necessity of distraction. Of offering her exit ramps from her fury. I was frustrated to hear this. Dang it all, I’d offered her the sippy cup, favorite toys, rocking, a snack. I told Matt that his timing had been miraculous, and she had tired of crying at the exact same moment he showed up with a piece of watermelon. He looked me doubtfully and said, “Sippy cup.”

Fine.

In the hours after the meltdown, I laid in bed, my eyeballs getting grittier and grittier, my heart beating faster and faster. I couldn’t stop worst-case-scenario-ing. What would I do on the nights Matt couldn’t stay over, when I’d be alone with Scissor Girl and Princess Rage-a-Lot? Would Brooklyn wake up livid again? What if she didn’t stop crying? What if she hurt herself flailing about in her temper tantrum? What if Kennedy did something so impulsive, she got really, seriously injured? Where is the nearest hospital? If a kid is bleeding, do I have to buckle the car seat?

Eventually, blessedly, my mind wandered. I thought about the Blue Babies Pink podcast. After decades of begging God to remove his same-gender attraction, Brett remembered the serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Oh. Yes. That control thing uh-gain.

So I prayed.

Jesus, I can’t change Kennedy’s impulsiveness or Brooklyn’s temper. I just can’t. And that makes me freakin’ crazy. But I can see that the frustrations of a toddler are real. I can choose how I react—which is not in fear, because fear isn’t on your team—and I can be present and calm even in the meltdowns. I can start over as many times as it takes.

I fell asleep murmuring the serenity prayer. I fell asleep asking God to change me rather than “fixing” a little girl. I fell asleep. I fell asleep.

And the next few days? There were more meltdowns, more unpredictable and unsafe behaviors. But there was a ton of laughter, too, way more laughter than tears.

Truth? This little girl, the one who is almost fifty years old, can be just as reckless, just as angry, as her grandgirls. Although I have a handful of coping mechanisms in my toolbox, I don’t always use them. I’m all too ready to do before thinking, react before breathing, blurt out before praying.

Every night and every day, though, I am loved. There’s a good and gentle and kind God who knows and sees, who pulls the blankie up to my chin, who overlooks my demands and my glares and my bellows, and whispers, “Sleep well, my angel. Sleep well.”