Petty Crimes of the Heart

Aside ~ July 10, 2017 ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 3 Comments

When I was around seven, I became a criminal.

I started shoplifting from the neighborhood Safeway store. (It was more than just groceries then. It sort of had a bit of everything.)

My friend Vana and I did the stealing, together, at first. I don’t recall whose idea it was.

I think the first item we took was something really small and inexpensive, such as a candy. There was such rush of danger to it. An adrenaline high.

I know I enjoyed the risky feeling of it. Of getting away with something. Of doing something wrong and not being caught.

There were a few more items, leading up to the very difficult-to-steal stationary set. It was a large box set, and the fact that I somehow managed to get away with it was more the real prize, I think, than the stationary itself. (It was grown up stationary, not even something I wanted.)

But the pièce de résistance was a gold ring. The ring probably cost $50, but it was harder to get to and it carried higher stakes if caught. I don’t even think Vana was in on this one. I was egging my own self on by this point. Pushing my own limits and capabilities.

I am still not sure why I felt compelled to turn to such lowly capers. We were not rich, but we were not in need. I had a room full of things. My needs were mostly met, at least materially.

I did not even enjoy any of the items I stole. I felt so guilty. I tried to thrown them down the storm drain, but could only throw away the first thing I took, the candy. The rest I stashed on the top shelf in the corner of my closet.

From that corner, those items taunted me daily. They called me “Robber.” “Stealer.” I was nauseous with fear most of the time. Fear of being found out. Fear of what my parents would think of me if they knew. That stash kept me up at night. It felt as if it was alive on that shelf. As if I was harboring a defenseless animal or something.

Finally one night, when I could not stand it anymore, I went into my parents bedroom and announced that “their daughter was a shoplifter.”

In a rush of shame and tears, I told the whole dirty story. As I had been up until that point an incredibly reserved and careful girl who made perfect grades and never rocked the boat, I have the feeling they felt that I had probably been under the influence of Vana, who they judged as wilder than I.

I led them to my stash and showed them the evidence of my sickness. Instead of being concerned for my sanity, looking back, I think they were somewhat impressed by what I had gotten away with stealing.

As punishment, my parents had me take the items back to the store and confess my sins. Luckily and unluckily, there were no repercussions from the store.

My parents seemed to feel that my real punishment was knowing their disappointment in me. And they were right in that. It just leveled me.

I still feel shame around it, even though I work at forgiving my child of seven for needing to take those things. She needed something. It wasn’t those things.

I say it was unlucky that there were no repercussions.

I think that my seven year-old was really lost. I think I was terribly lost. I think I needed help and attention but had no idea how to ask for it.

I didn’t get the help I didn’t know I needed then.

But I never stole again.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: caper

The 51st Way

Aside ~ July 7, 2017 ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 4 Comments

If you wish to quell your boredom with this lover or with that

Take a quill in hand and write a note to create an awful spat

Accuse them, then be querulous, say they’re nothing but a rat

They’ll question and they’ll quiver, then they’ll quit and leave you flat

Alone at last, your boredom quelled, you’ll grin like a Cheshire cat

You’ll feel quantum relief and joy having made a stunning coup d’etat

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Post: quill

#fiftywaystoleaveyourlover

Laying Claim

Aside ~ July 6, 2017July 7, 2017 ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 7 Comments

Tether me down to the ground, if you love me

The winds of change are at my heels once more

I’ve been running too far, too fast, for too long

Need to drop anchor and rest, lay my head on the shore

Let me listen to the whispers of the rustling trees

Feel the pulse of the earth through my bones

Tether me down to the ground, if you love me

Let us drown out the call o’ the wild with sweet moans

Inspired by The Daily Poat Daily Word Post: tether

Stargazing

Aside ~ July 5, 2017July 5, 2017 ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 6 Comments

I was plucked from a cluster of stars

I was shot from divine skies

If you want to get to know me

Just look into my eyes

I’ve lived for thousands of years

Held court on dirtmats and on thrones

There’s moonglow in my pocket

And stardust in my bones

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: pluck

Olive Oyl’s Lament

Aside ~ July 4, 2017July 5, 2017 ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ Leave a comment

Every time I think,

“That’s it. Gonna be smooth sailing from here on out!”

It is always anything but.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: sail

Happy Fourth of July! Let freedom ring.

Miracle of Miracles

Aside ~ July 2, 2017February 11, 2018 ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 11 Comments

Some might call my cat Miracle a “fraidy cat.”

I say she just has sensitive hearing and has a very vivid imagination.

When there is any kind of pitched alarm (door buzzer, oven timer, etc) she scampers away to the nearest place of safety and won’t come out again until she is good and ready.

Ceiling fans really create stress for her. The shadows made from their fins taunt her. I think she imagines a great flying creature is overhead, ready to swoop down for the kill at any moment.

Her movements walking through the room with one in it are strategically designed to avoid being directly beneath the “creature’s” view.

She hugs the edges of the room, and if she has to go beneath her enemy for some reason (the doorman buzzed and she has to get to the back bedroom to safety!) she runs low to the ground looking up as she passes as if a pterodactyl is overhead and death is imminent. Kitty armageddon!

I feel for her. I relate to moving through the world in fight or flight mode. I, too, have sensitive hearing and a very vivid imagination. I, too, can make monsters out of harmless things and people.

Miracle was given her name by the Wichita Falls, TX vet who saved her life. She’d been found, near death, having been abused by someone. He named her Miracle because it was a miracle she had survived.

Her back leg is still a bit wonky from whatever cruelty was inflicted on her as a baby. And she hates being handled.

She is a fierce survivor.

My brother John adopted her immediately upon meeting her, despite already having two cats. They bonded deeply: she would perch on his broad shoulders when he was at his computer, and sleep on his vast chest when he slept.

When my brother died suddenly, she and his other two cats were left for a day and a half alone in his apartment after the EMT took him away.

As my father, other brother and I packed up John’s apartment, Miracle was the only one who would come out from her hiding places now and then. When we were done after a few days and it was time to leave, I had to go in and capture all of the cats. John’s vet was taking the 2 older ones. We were driving Miracle across Texas to Houston.

Turns out a fourth cat was hiding under the bed with the other two. He was a stray John had sometimes fed on his porch. Somehow he got in, probably during the EMT situation.

This cat did not look well. I left him until last and then went ahead and gathered him up to take him to the vet too.

(We later found out that that cat was indeed very sick. The other two older cats were infected. Somehow, Miracle survived that too. It was such a relief that she’d escaped that. My brother would have been heartbroken at that whole sad situation.)

We drove Miracle down the 8 or so hours to Houston. I had offered her a home, but my cancer-fighting father insisted that he take care of her at his house there.

(My father, who had NEVER liked cats. He’d somehow fallen in love and then married a woman who had a huge heart and an enormous love of all animals. We always had cats and dogs growing up, much to his chagrin. He had begrudgingly tolerated them over the years.

Once, he suggested my mom just feed them all dry food, I guess he hated the smell of canned food. My mother asked him would he like to eat ceareal for dinner the rest of their marriage. That put that to rest.

But having lost his father, then his sweetheart of 54 years and now his son in a short period of time, I think his heart was so stretched out by grief that he was willing and able. And perhaps it was a last act of fatherhood he could give to John, to look after his favorite cat.)

Miracle and my Dad got along surprisingly well. I will never forget visiting and actually seeing him let her get on his lap! He said she was alright company. He just wished two things: that she’d not throw up or lick his arm. Otherwise, she was ok.

They were together about 7 months until my Dad died. Again, the EMT came, this time to take my Dad away. But luckily, my other brother was the one who found him, so he was there to help Miracle through the commotion this time.

Now, the plan was for me to bring her up to NYC to live with me. She was on her own for about a month in my Dad’s house until I could fly down. My brother visited her daily, but she grew very lonely.

I was getting married and moving all at the same time and needed to wait for a calm time to bring her up where I could help her integrate.

But she was getting restless alone, so it became clear we had to do something.

Fortunately, and quite miraculously, at my father’s memorial service, his first secretary happened to offer an interim place for her to stay. Turned out she fostered animals and was well set up to take in a cat shortterm. So Miracle was moved to her place, where she had an area in a finished basement. She was played with, and safe.

I finally got down as soon as I could after the move and flew her back home. Anyone who has traveled on a plane with a cat knows it is very stressful on them. She did pretty well, considering.

I carefully went about the process of adding her to my household, which already held two cats: a brother and sister who had been the apples of my eye and ruled my roost for 15 years.

Though I implemented all the plans I read about how to do this, it did not go well. The other two were not welcoming, and sort of forced Miracle into living in one room of the apartment. Suddenly there were war zones, and each cat had their own territory.

My visions of three cats piled together sleeping on the couch were dashed.

It wasn’t what I had hoped, but Miracle seemed happy enough in her zone, which was my husband and my shared office. She had her own litter box and food area.

And so we became a three cat household.

It turns out that this Miracle cat, who I thought I was saving by bringing her to my home, would end up saving mine.

Within a month after bringing her up, my beloved boy cat Pookie was diagnosed with an agressive bone cancer. He passed away within three months.

It was devastating. Shortly thereafter, his sister Sabrina was diagnosed with cancer. After a long illness, she too passed away the next year.

So for the first year and a half with us, Miracle was not only the third cat on the totem pole, but she was also sort of the backburner cat to the ill cats in terms of attention.

The day I lost Sabrina was extremely hard. For whatever reason, her loss held all the other major losses in it: my mother, brother, father and Pookie.

Thank God for Miracle.

If I’d had to come home to an empty-of-cats home, it would have been even more impossibly sad than it already was.

But fortunately, I came home to a little furry loved one who needed my attention. And boy, did I need her.

Today, Miracle has reign of the full apartment, as well as our full attention. It has taken time for her to expand her territory into formerly enemy regions. And though I think a part of her will always be looking over her shoulder, she seems to be fully owning being top cat, and flourishing under our undying love.

Yes, she is sensitive to sounds and she thinks ceiling fans are flying predators. But it has been several years without the EMT at the door, and we are pretty much now living in her apartment instead of her living in ours.

Just as it should be.

Inspired by The Daily Post daily Word Prompt: scamper

A Passenger Here Myself

Aside ~ July 1, 2017July 1, 2017 ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 4 Comments

A stranger I am, here am I

I sit and watch the world go by

I reach, I strive, I seek to live

I know that I’ve so much to give

I try to drive, I drive to try

I think God’s laughing in the sky.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: passenger

Constant Craving

Aside ~ June 30, 2017July 1, 2017 ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 10 Comments

When I was a girl, I lived for food.

The promise of the after-school snack kept me going through the grueling days of my youth. I’d race home to find sweet and savory relief from the confusion of adolescence.

I’d eat from a box of graham crackers, spreading layers of vanillla chocolate chip canned frosting. Or I’d slice up a Snickers bar the way they did in a commercial on at the time, pretending I was in it. Then maybe some Lay’s potato chips. Maybe a Wonder Bread/Gulden’s Mustard/Kraft cheese and baloney sandwich.

I was on my own, so I could eat like I wanted to. No father home yet to bring tension and self-consciousness to the air.

I’d fill myself, quelling the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that haunted me at any other time of my day. This was all mine. My time free from criticism, pressure or fear.

Over the years, I became desperate around this intimate connection with food. Protective of the rituals. The private pleasure I found in food and the act of eating it.

I knew something was off about how I related to food. I felt ashamed and like there was something wrong with me, while at the same time feeling like it was crucial to my very existence. That trichotomy created a painful struggle inside me of shame and appetite and need.

I became secretive around it, knowing on some level that I was not like other people.

I now understand that somewhere along the way, I learned to equate food with so many things I needed: love, attention, security, connectedness, relief, quiet, peace, pleasure, a sense of having something for myself, a way to feel like I had control of one thing in the world.

I believe that some of this relationship to food was learned, familial. My mother, too, sought refuge in her treats. She loved candy, and when I came home from school, she was usually lying in her bed, reading mystery novels, eating candy from a stash she kept in her bedside table. She, too, at some point in her life, reached for food to solve and resolve being on this planet.

I understood her for this. I feel such compassion for her. For her huge needs and the dysfunctional way she had developed to cope with getting them met.

It has taken many years of unraveling this connection for me to find a new relationship to food. There’s been tremendous loss in it. A loss of my friend, my savior, my companion, my sidekick.

But it has been so freeing, too. I have been learning how to give myself what I had asked for from food all those years: love.

Sounds easy, and obvious, right? But what does that actually look like?

It looks like this: giving myself The Five A’s of Love: Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection, and Allowing.

(The Five A’s concept is from the wonderful book How To Be An Adult in Relationships – Five Keys to Mindful Loving by psychotherapist, David Richo, PhD.)

Those Five A’s satisfy the snack craving every time. I’m not saying I don’t still crave and even miss that snack eating ritual. I do. That’s a deeply embedded habit. I got pretty hard-wired around it.

But today, I take the snack-seeking girl inside by the hand, and I ask her what she really needs.

Sometimes it is some appreciation for all I have been doing all day.

Sometimes it is affection. Maybe a bath. Some demonstration of loving care.

Maybe it is the need to be allowed to really acknowledge feeling afraid, or spent, or angry.

It took awhile for that part of myself to trust that my needs could be met in new ways. To trust in something other than food.

To trust life. To trust love. To trust loving myself, in life.

It is an every day practice, this mindfulness of love. I pour the energy I used to hold for food into other things. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t gotten my wires crossed, that food wasn’t so complicated for me.
But it is.

And so I accept this truth as if I were diabetic, and I do what I need to do to care for myself.

Mostly, as I said, I feel free.

I no longer carry that shame I felt around it. I am literally lighter in spirit. That feeling is the prize I keep my sights on. It is what makes it all worth it.

I may no longer “have” snacks. But I have me.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: snack

Cutting the Cord

Aside ~ June 21, 2017June 21, 2017 ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 4 Comments

I am on a quest.

A quest to trust myself more. Especially in the arena of decision-making.

It sounds easy enough, right? I mean, I am me. So it makes sense that I should be able to make decisions and act on them. Easy-peasy.

I have thoughts and feelings. I reference the information stored in my brain and body that I have gained through experiences in my lifetime until now.

I know my values. I have my goals, my aspirations. My action plan. I have one, five and ten year plans in place just like experts tell you to. These are supposed to be the touchstone from which you make decisions. Check in with what they are, and if the thing is in alignment with them, voila, you have your decision. What’s not to trust?

But the process above is not the way it goes for me. I agonize over decisions, major and minor. Whether it be deciding what restaurant to go to for dinner or if I should buy a new apartment.

In my decision-making process, I am riddled with doubt at every turn. There is a constant loop of second-guessing that plays in my head. What “should” I do? What are other people doing? What if I pick the wrong thing and ruin my life forever? What if I regret my choice? What if I could have made a better choice? I torture myself.

I used to explain this away as a Libran “ism.” As a Libra, I am prone to weigh the different sides of things. I can see the value in opposing sides. Fairness is of high importance to me. I can see the good in the bad and the bad in the good. It makes decision-making a tedious mess. I end up feeling torn.

I have also pointed to my being an actress, a storyteller, as part of the issue. When posed with a scenario, my mind naturally starts to put together paths of logic that stem from every possibility. I have a vibrant and active imagination and can envision potential outcomes in great detail. This does not necessarily make for easy decisions.

I have even thought that my difficulty making decisions had to do with being the youngest. Often, as the youngest, you grow up doing what others want you to do and going where you are told to go. You learn to follow your older siblings’ lead. You want to do what they do. You want to be where the action is. You don’t know there is any other way than how the family treats you: as the littlest: you are usually just told what to feel, think and do.

I also come from a Protestant people who I think are quite fear-based, so it is in my genes to be cautious and to fear bad things happening as a result of one’s own actions. Don’t rock the boat. Go with the flow. Don’t make waves. This desire to fit in and to protect myself by blending in is often at war with my other desires and impulses, making decision-making all the more tricky.

I also know that due to traumatic events at a pivotal time in my early childhood, I learned to discount my own experience and sense of truth. To doubt my inner truth in favor of what others’ think. That certainly has messed with my ability to reach within, make a decision and trust it.

Though all of these may indeed and probably do contribute to the problem, they aren’t the root cause of my decision-making difficulties. The root, I have come to learn, is satellite thinking.

Satellite thinking/living occurs when a person makes other people’s ideas and opinions and actions have more meaning than one’s own. To be constantly seeking outside evidence, clues and advice as to what to do.

I didn’t even know that is what I was doing for many years. That I was always looking outside of myself to decide what to do. It is incredibly painful to live that way. It’s exhausting!

I know it now, and I am so grateful.

There’s no fulfillment in that way of living. Ever.

It has been quite an awakening to realize this and to shift into my own core. It has been perhaps the most amazing healing work I have ever done in my life. It has taken patience and tremendous love. I have had to learn to really listen to my own voice within and to discern it apart from those other voices inside my head that have worn their groove into my neuropaths.

And I now feel that I am at the last phase of becoming core-centered. I am at the phase where I actually jump off the psychic edge of the familiarity of looking to the outside to guide me. Where I willingly fall into the unknown abyss that core-centered living feels like.

It is flat-out terrifying. And exciting.

When I think about truly entering into this relationship with myself: asking myself alone what is the next right action; when I think about asking questions of myself such as how do I really want to lively life, and what does a meaningful, well-lived look like to me; what will I feel was a “worthy” life when I am on my deathbed…when I begin to live with these questions, really listening for the answers within underneath the cacophony of those loops, I feel dizzy and disoriented, literally.

It feels like I will become like the astronaut in 2001 A Space Odyssey who is disconnected from the mothership, floating away into black nothingness…

A terrifying image. That is truly how scary it feels. My entire relationship to life is changing. Scary, to be sure. And yet.

It also feels like finally coming home to roost. Like the Eagle has finally landed.

Like I have finally found what I have been looking for and missing my whole life.

Can I ever truly erase that ever-playing loop of doubt in my head? That constant tendency to look to see what is happening “over there,” to ask what are “they” doing in order to decide what I want to do? To question my own sense of reality and defer to what others say is the truth or what I think others would do or what I imagine they want me to do. Can I halt that loop?

Maybe not. But I know it for what it is now. It is just old static. I can brush it away, like a stray hair that is tickling my face.

I can tune the knob and find my own frequency inside. Sometimes it takes awhile to find, but it is always there.

Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz discovering the power to go home again, I find I’ve had it in me all along.

Turns out, I am my own mothership.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: loop