Enlightenment came in a traffic jam on I-24.

Ben’s friend L has a mother who is a musician. I asked for a CD, not knowing what to expect – worried I might not like it and then I’d have to find a way to say something positive without being dishonest. After all, this is Music City, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to do that.

I saw the CD on the backseat as I threw my gym bag in Olivia’s carseat. So I put it in.

Oh. My. God.

. . . .

I hate using God’s name in vain or hearing it used in vain, but no other response seemed to fit. Imagine it as celebratory. Grateful to the Universe. For genius. For God putting a bit of divinity in this woman. In all of us. And then the knowing came: This is what I’m meant for. It felt like sunlight. A catch and call – this naming of what is and has always been. I don’t have the genius I’ve always desired, but I recognize it in others. I hear her music, the words, her voice, the passion, and I feel small. Then my knowing makes me feel larger.

Once, in a very open, very unselfconscious moment, I was asked what I’d really like to do with my life.

“I’d like to be a guardian angel when I die.”

My response surprised me and grabbed toward hope. Maybe after death, my desire will be strong enough to pull me into that realm. The woman who asked replied, “That’s what you are now.” If only that were true.

But today I saw it. Semis on either side, fumes, impatient cars with blinkers trying to exit, creeping slowly, stuck. The answer: She’s right. This is what I’m here for. It’s not the gift I’ve consciously wanted, but an image of the writer I’ve always wanted to be pales in comparison with this new role.

I sit on the back porch as I type this. The autumn day is crisp and warm and clear. The CD is playing loudly in my car, parked near the porch. And there is such beauty and clarity and gratitude in this place.

Maybe it’s the music. Maybe it’s romanticism.

I’m willing to embrace this role. Sometimes when I see beauty in something or someone, I feel I’ve seen a ghost in that everyone around me doesn’t also see it. I had a dream when I was young – maybe teens or early twenties: I was with a group of people. We were moving boxes into or out of a house. Everyone busy and strained with physical effort. I saw a rainbow in the distance. I called to the others, “Look! A rainbow!” No one stopped to look. Then one end of the rainbow began to swing toward us. I called more urgently to no avail. It moved closer and closer until it flooded over me and bathed me in its warm, colored light. “Look, a rainbow,” I said weakly. I couldn’t get anyone to turn, but my job is to keep trying. We all have the ability to see it. I hate when I let my mind cloud with dark thoughts and obscure my vision.

Sometimes, when I point out the beauty of someone and David doesn’t see it, he shakes his head and says, “You think everyone is beautiful,” as if maybe I’m just not discerning. But right now, at this moment, I realize I’m right. And the irony of it is this: my acceptance that I don’t have to BE it, my job is just to SEE it, essentially requires that I must let myself into that gathering, too.

I once read about a meditation exercise which you perform while eating. You think of the food and the hands that prepared it, the ground that grew it, the sunshine and rain that nurtured it, etc. So I did this while sitting on the back deck, eating an apple with peanut butter. The apple was a little easier to imagine, as it was a locally grown item. I thought about a seed which grew a tree which blossomed and bestowed. I thought of hands plucking apples, a twist and snap. One being dropped. Dozens filling a basket, the basket swaying as it was carried from the orchard. I thought of the shade created by the trees; children running down tree alleys. I thought of the effort to sort the apples, box them for CSA customers, load the packaged loot, drive the van to pick-up locations. Did the driver have a hard morning? Was she happy? Was he tired from a long day of physical labor?

Then I thought about the peanuts. Grown in darkness, pulled from the shadows, dirt clumps shaken from their curved bodies. Or harvested by turbines and tractors? I don’t know. And where did they go afterwards? A processing plant. Workers with hairnets, making minimum wage, waiting for a cigarette break. Still the hands of human miracle involved in the process. And hands of human miracle created the machinery. Shipped across country in large semis? Thrown roughly onto pallets? I don’t know.

The peanut mediation isn’t as satisfying. The mystery isn’t appealing to me. It makes me appreciate local farms and our privileged ability to buy locally and my small knowledge of the origins of some of our food.

I’m going to try a new meditation exercise each day. This blog has gone negative. Swimming yesterday and getting eight hours of sleep last night seem to have given me some perspective. Grateful.

Is it lack of exerc ise? Too much sugar? Forgetting my medicine for a few days?

I’d forgotten what it was like to have my emotional and mental state control my life. Couldn’t attend the Fall party at Olivia’s school today, because I was on the verge of a panic attack. Keep spewing the involuntary words and don’t want to shock the kids when the “F” word blurts from my mouth. Hate feeling crazy. And I realize, at these moments, that I’m still mentally disturbed underneath it all. Near tears. Irritable. Reckless. Self-sabotaging.

Read Boy Meets Boy for Children’s Lit. A gay teen novel. Also read several scholarly articles about the book, both of which discussed teenage sexuality, etc. At one point, I found myself back at 14 and the tears just started up. I always think I’m over “stuff,” and then something will trigger a memory and I realize that it’ll probably never be gone completely despite years of therapy.

Had a dreadful nightmare the other night. Couldn’t shake the feel of it all day long. I was a child at a preschool with many other children. Every day, this “teacher” would come and we’d play this game where he’d chase us and when he’d catch us, we’d each be sexually tortured – one by one. The utter dread and powerlessness of it still makes me feel leaden. I remember at one point, thinking, “Maybe he won’t catch me today,” and I felt a small hope. Then there was a great flood, and I saved another child from drowning. I saved one of his children. It would have lessened his game by one, and I thought, “Maybe he’ll be grateful. Maybe he’ll go easy on me this time.” I felt like a traitor and accomplice.

Feeling grateful lately for my first “real” boyfriend at 16. How sweet and caring he was. How healing and respectful. I wonder if I’d be able to enjoy any sort of healthy relationship today if it weren’t for his influence in my life. He lived just a few miles from my house in a neighboring town (about 45 minutes away), and I found out several months ago that he and his wife and two children live just a few miles from me now. I run into him every once in a while, and I always want to tell him what a great role he played in my life. I want to say, “Thank you,” and “I’m sorry for being such a wacko,” but I don’t want to be inappropriate by bringing up our past relationship. What the hell did he ever see in me?

La. La. La. Why does anyone read this trash?

Is it lack of exerc ise? Too much sugar? Forgetting my medicine for a few days?

I’d forgotten what it was like to have my emotional and mental state control my life. Couldn’t attend the Fall party at Olivia’s school today, because I was on the verge of a panic attack. Keep spewing the involuntary words and didn’t want to shock any children when the “F” word blurts from my mouth. Hate feeling crazy. And I realize, at these moments, that I’m still mentally disturbed underneath it all. Near tears. Irritable. Reckless. Self-sabotaging.

Read Boy Meets Boy for Children’s Lit. A gay teen novel. Also read several scholarly articles about the book, both of which discussed teenage sexuality, etc. At one point, I found myself back at 14 and the tears just started up. I always think I’m over “stuff,” and then something will trigger a memory and I realize that it’ll probably never be gone completely despite years of therapy.

Had a dreadful nightmare the other night. Couldn’t shake the feel of it all day long. I was a child at a preschool with many other children. Every day, this “teacher” would come and we’d play this game where he’d chase us and when he’d catch us, we’d each be sexually tortured – one by one. The utter dread and powerlessness of it still makes me feel leaden. I remember at one point, thinking, “Maybe he won’t catch me today,” and I felt a small hope. Then there was a great flood, and I saved another child from drowning. I saved one of his children. It would have lessened his game by one, and I thought, “Maybe he’ll be grateful. Maybe he’ll go easy on me this time.” I felt like a traitor and accomplice.

Feeling grateful lately for my first “real” boyfriend at 16. How sweet and caring he was. How healing and respectful. I wonder if I’d be able to enjoy any sort of healthy relationship today if it weren’t for his influence in my life. He lived just a few miles from my house in a neighboring town (about 45 minutes away), and I found out several months ago that he and his wife and two children live just a few miles from my house. I run into him every once in a while, and I always want to tell him what a great role he played in my life. I want to say, “Thank you,” and “I’m sorry for being such a wacko,” but I don’t want to be inappropriate by bringing up our past relationship. What the hell did he ever see in me?

La. La. La. Why does anyone read this trash?

Random Acts of Senseless Beauty just had the most excellent wedding, and I had a wonderful reunion with We Are Fambly, who was in town for the wedding. AND I got to meet JUDE and H.

I took the kids with me to see We Are Fambly, and ever-inquisitive Olivia wanted me to explain who we were seeing and how I knew this person, etc. I didn’t bring anything up, but I knew she would be a little confused by Jude’s two mommies. I thought of my in-laws and how much Olivia talks to them about everything and how such a thing might come up. I could just imagine their horror at how we are raising our children by “exposing” them to such “sin” and treating it as acceptable. I found myself hoping Olivia wouldn’t bring it up with the in-laws. Then I mentally slapped myself. It stung.

I thought about the Civil Rights era and how racism was believed by some Christians to be biblical. I thought about how a mother like me might have been nervous for her conservative Christian in-laws to discover that her children were playing with black children. How pathetic to even care about such hateful opinions. I suddenly didn’t give a damn what was revealed to the in-laws. My role is miniscule, but I want to be bold in it. I want to be part of societal change for what is right.

Of course I got lost on the way there. What should have taken 30 minutes took an hour. The kids were AWESOME the ENTIRE TIME. They played and talked and cracked each other up in the backseat. Ben was coloring and amusing Olivia with his innovative additions to the pictures in the Spiderman and Superheroes coloring book – one of which involved him giving Catwoman nipples.

We finally arrived. We Are Fambly hadn’t aged – though she had gotten a kick-ass haircut. H was like the earth. I’m not sure how else to describe her. She seemed both solid and flexible. An old, wise, confident, completely accepting spirit. She took my kids and played football and soccer with them so I could talk. My ultra-shy guy Ben took to her immediately. I don’t think they realized how uncommon that is for him.

And Jude. Perfect and beautiful and heartbreaking. It made me feel sad to see her – knowing it might be years before I’d see her again. I had the odd sensation of missing someone upon first meeting them. I got to hold her briefly. Her head smelled like sunshine.

When we went inside for snacks, Olivia and I found ourselves alone for a moment. “Who is Jude’s mom?” she asked.

“They both are,” I explained. “Like M has two dads. Jude has two moms.”

“But who’s the mom?” she insisted.

“A is the one who birthed Jude,” I said, finally understanding what she was getting at.

Jude was put down for a nap. My kids were fed orange muffins, bread with jam, apple slices, chocolate, and salt-and-vinegar potato chips. After they gorged themselves, it seemed time for us to leave. I started feeling a little sad again. We Are Fambly and I have never been super close, but I have always wanted to know her more. She’s so damn fascinating, witty and deep. And now I’ve met her little fambly, and they’re all beautiful. Sigh.

We head out. Hugs all around. Even Ben squeezing some necks, and - as is typical - Olivia not really hugging, but allowing herself to be hugged.

On the way back home (took less than 30 minutes this time), Olivia was asking about things again; she concluded that Jude was We Are Fambly’s kid.

“No,” I corrected her. “She’s the kid of both of them.”

“But A’s the mom,” she insisted.

“Well I’m your mom, but you’re daddy’s kid, too. You’re just as much his kid as you are mine.”

I think she got it. And then she and Ben started giggling again. Ben was using a red marker to make blood ooze from Spiderman’s nose and drip down the page. Yeah. Classic.

Finally made it to the Y, but only rode the bike for 20 minutes or so. Reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and it’s delightful, though it made me cry this morning. Horrors of war. But beauty too (though not of war).

Looked at Skeptoid.com per Anonymous’s suggestion, and I realize my ideas and experiences may sound crazy to some people, BUT I can’t deny them. I guess I could choose to do so, but it seems much more logical to accept that there is something beyond us (or within us) that we don’t understand.

Even my skeptical husband – after nearly 12 years of marriage – has come to accept that a variety of weird things have to be more than coincidence.

I’ll just offer two examples here.

Once, I got a job working for this lecherous old man who was starting a flea market. I picked up a friend of his from the airport one day. His friend (also lecherous but not quite as old) started talking to me about energy, etc. and said I should do an experiment. “Think of someone you haven’t been in touch with for a while and send them thoughts to contact you. It may take a week or a month, but they’ll get in touch with you.”

Always eager for the bizarre, and figuring, “What could it hurt?”, I started sending my thoughts to my friend Alpesh. Alpesh had moved to the Dominican Republic to go to medical school. He was my best friend in high school and I dearly loved him, but there was that whole friendship/romantic conflict thing, and we’d just drifted apart. For a year, I hadn’t heard from him, nor had I contacted him. I missed him. So I thought of him all day long, trying to conjure up energy and thinking, “Call me Al….”

Didn’t really expect anything to happen, BUT that VERY NIGHT the phone rang at 11:00 p.m. It was Al.

“Are you okay?” he asked with great concern.

“I’m fine, “ I answered incredulously. “You’re not going to believe this…”

“Don’t shit with me, Lisa. What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m okay! I tried this thing…..”

I explained it to him, but he wasn’t remotely interested, and I doubt he believed it, because he wasn’t one to believe in that sort of thing. He was just relieved that I was okay.

“I’ve had the strongest feeling all day that I had to call you,” he said.

Yes, yes…you could call it coincidence, but in my opinion it would take less imagination and seem more practical to just believe something mystical and unexplainable had happened.

Oh, and I just remembered something similar happened in Chicago. This was prior to the Alpesh incident. I was studying at Lincoln Park, and feeling desperate to believe in God and watching a man play with a beautiful golden retriever. Having just read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe for the first time, I longed to bury my hands in the dog’s thick “mane.” It was a beautiful dog, and (once again feeling desperate) I sent out thoughts for it to come over to me.

I fell asleep in my beach chair - as so often happened when I was studying – and I awoke to something heavy on my right arm. It was the dog. It was resting its head on my arm. I petted it and it was as soft as I imagined it would be. I buried my face in its fur, but I had less than a minute, because the owner came running up. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said. I assured him it was fine and he let me pet his dog for a few more seconds before they ran off again.

One more example from a few years ago: I went to my chiropractor one evening and when I opened the door, I was hit by the sense of a deep, deep sorrow. The air felt thick with it. Even walking to the empty receptionist’s desk, I felt like I was walking through thick air. She came out from a side room to sign me in. She looked sad. “Are you okay?” I asked cautiously. “I will be,” she said.

I told David about it, and all weekend we prayed for her. The next week when I went back for my next appointment, I found out that her sister had died in a tragic car accident. She was just in her 30s. Maybe I was meant to pray for the receptionist. I don’t know.

With the receptionist, the strong feeling I had was a goosebumpy, watering-eyes feeling that I’ve experienced occasionally since I was young. I first remember it when I was seven or eight. We had a ditch in front of our house that filled with water. Every day in the summer, my sister and I would look for a frog, thinking of it as a stream or something. All summer long we hadn’t found one (though we must’ve found one at some point in time to even think to look for one.) I woke up one morning with the absolute knowledge that I would find a frog that day.

Even at seven or eight, it freaked me out a little, because it wasn’t a casual thought – it was a strong and decisive feeling. I thought it even more bizarre – yet very right – when we DID find a frog that day. The only one we found all summer. I began to learn to trust that feeling, and I believe it saved me many times on the road. “Get into the other lane!” it would say, and I would do it quickly – just in time to see the truck that had been in front of me in my former lane swerve hastily to avoid some large metal object in the road. Maybe I wouldn’t have run into it. Maybe my reflexes would have been quick enough to avoid it, too. But the feeling was that watery-eyes, goosebumpy feeling. So I just trust it – though I’ve never trusted it as an absolute. I am open to the fact that it could be wrong someday, but I still follow if it gives advice.

Oh! And quite possibly it saved some children, too. In college, I was driving to a friend’s house, and when I approached my normal turn, I got that feeling that I should drive past the street. It was particularly strong - more like a scream - I had no choice but to listen. So I drove around the block. When I looked down the stretch of road I had avoided, I could see (dimly) some children riding their bikes in the road. The streetlight had burned out above them. My gratitude was overwhelming. Maybe I wouldn’t have hit them, but…I can’t even imagine if I had…

Here’s a diagram, because I can’t describe it very well. (“A” was my friend’s house. “B” is where the children were playing. The arrows show the round-about route I took.)



I don’t expect everyone to believe these things, and I’m not really offended if they don’t. After all, I do realize I don’t have a very good argument for my sanity.

Might not have much battery left. Ha. What a metaphor. I’m actually referring to the laptop. I’m at the coffee shop, not near a plug, spending money I shouldn’t be spending.

Feeling a heaviness in my chest. It started this morning after waking from a dream in which I was watching We Are Fambly’s darling Jude. We were in the basement of Moody Bible Institute (where I once attended school in real life). Jude was beyond precious. Beautiful and perfect and precocious. I felt my chest caving in with love for her. Then I realized that her little “fambly” – her two mothers – would not be accepted by the majority of society. The chest caving in feeling was now due deep, deep sorrow. How utterly wrong and ridiculous.

Everything feels wrong lately. I know I need to exercise. It’s what brings me back to life, but my once-loved exercise now feels like a chore.

Had class today. The students are so young. So beautiful and perfect and smooth and firm. I hope they know that. I hope they don’t waste time with needless insecurities. And then I made a disparaging remark about fundamentalism in class and I feel terribly guilty about it. Just because it was traumatic and abusive in my experience, doesn’t mean it might not work for someone else. I plan to apologize at the start of next class. Or maybe I could send an email. It was rude and insulting of me. Some of my dearest friends are somewhat fundamental in their Christian beliefs, and they are beautiful people. My experience with fundamentalism was anything but beautiful.

So anyway, here I am typing, wondering why the hell am I doing this? I’m trying to pull myself out, but why go public with these words? We all want our story to be heard, but why?

I wrote completely for myself the other day, and it was wonderful not to edit in my head. What emerged was definitely not suitable for this blog – full of desire and sex and all those things I’m simply not anymore now that I’m a wife and mother.

Dancing at my friend’s 40th birthday party the other night was an amazing release. The closest an old girl can come to touching that element of youth.

Today, in the cafeteria area of school, a young perky brunette in a very short dress approached three guys at a table in front of me. The guys were all a little overweight and not beautiful by our sad social standards. She was running for “Queen” of the homecoming court or something, and she passed out small flyers with her photo and “Vote for ____ for Queen.” She left, smiling with her perfect white teeth and deep, deep tan, thinking (I can only imagine) of how she’d have those three votes in the bag. The guys laughed when she left, glibly holding the flyers between their fingers. I wonder what they were saying. I wanted to approach them, tell them I was doing a social interactions experiment and ask them what they thought of the girl and her flyers. I was too chicken, though.

It’s a perfect day. This expensive, sugar-free, vanilla latte tastes like crap, because really, there’s no good substitute for sugar, but I’m trying to cut back. It’s funny to me that I’m drinking a latte. It sounds so pretentious, and I’m such a rube. Really and truly.

And now I need to go pick up my kid. I’ve found no salvation in this writing, though the pressure on my chest is perhaps less intense. I need a day – a week – in a monastery. When the kids are in college, I’m going to take it.

I don’t know how to write about this.

Yesterday, Olivia found a beautiful chrysalis in the yard. Someone suggested we put it in the butterfly “house” so we could watch it emerge. We couldn’t find the regular netted house, so we put it in a “cricket house” with plastic sides and a vented top. It wasn’t a good alternative.

Ben wanted to check on it this morning, and when we went to look, the butterfly had already emerged, but it didn’t have the right kind of wind to dry its wings, apparently. It had fallen against the plastic bottom, with wings already misshapen. I quickly got it out and it stretched and slowly flapped its wings, but they weren’t straightening out. I put it on a bush to give it time, but an hour later, there was no change. I tried to (very delicately) help straighten the wings, but they kept falling back into their bent-up, misshapen form.

Then I had the idea to wet the butterfly, thinking that maybe it could dry them in the correct shape this time. It didn’t work. I tried it a second time. It didn’t work. This was an off-and-on all day process, because I kept waiting to see if the wings would right themselves.

Everytime I saw a butterfly in the yard, my heart would leap, but it was never my butterfly. I last checked on it near sunset. It was still hanging onto the lilac bush – no hope for flying with its deformed wings.

I’ve been trying to convince myself that the situation doesn’t warrant the sadness I feel about it. I couldn’t even talk to anyone about it all day. David called a few times during the day, and I almost wanted to tell him, but just couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. The neighbor saw me hanging clothes and came to chat. She asked if I were okay (sharp woman – can’t put anything past her), but I just said I was fine. The lilac bush was a few feet away. I could have shown her. Maybe she would have had a suggestion.

With all the horrors in the world, and people dying horrible deaths, etc., why do I feel so sick about this butterfly?

It’s because I feel responsible. I AM responsible. Never, never again.