Is it just now sinking in?

I can't believe that I am still going through stuff over the fire. Bear with me while I ramble a bit.

I feel like I have had all the hair on my body waxed, like something has been forcefully taken from me.

The holidays were actually pretty decent. I went a little crazy at Joann Fabrics and saved $300 about two weeks before Christmas and decorated my upstairs. Our tree came from a neighbour who used to be an interior decorator who have a slender tree to give us. It was 6' high and worked in our limited space. She cast off hundreds of red and silver balls and I bought plastic swags of red and white flowers for the walls, and birds for the tree.

The day after Christmas, a couple of miscreants were batting an ornament with a wrapping paper tube, which was my sigh-n from the gods that it was time to take it down. The kids cried and I had to keep moving stuff off the walls and the tree. I was called a grinch by my husband, but he wasn't having to deal with what I was dealing with, so I had to forge ahead.

A couple of days after Christmas, something occured to me and I don't know why, but sensations have come back to me. Why it took almost four months is because of when I felt safe in letting it come down. Writing has been very, very hard. Thinking ahead, even a few weeks out, has been impossibly hard. I was asked to do something for school in February before the Christmas break and I came home and cried. Two months away was so hard to conceptualize! And I had a new phone on which I didn't know how to insert a date and it overwhelmed me! I feel like I'd been numb, but now my brain is running around feeling every sensation that it can. . . cold, hot, happy, sad, windy, etc. On Guy's birthday, I was carrying his cake with candles and the heat, not the fire on them, got to my FACE. It was almost unbearable, but I have never noticed heat coming from birthday candles! This is normal and I am not flipping out-- I am just letting them come and telling myself it is all OK. If I make good cookies, they are doubly good, if someone upsets me I am wounded for an hour but jet up and wipe my tears. Dealing with this for a few weeks is OK, but much longer will not be OK. (School resuming for the kids and getting me busy is a good thing.) I let a friend from church who knows about fires know what was going on and he let me just talk. What I was needing was validation over what was coming back. I remember seeing a room that was on fire, but not seeing smoke or feeling heat, but the room was smokey and it was hotter than. . . he just nodded. Of course this all came back as he and his wife were going on vaccation. Still, I can email him and tell him what is on my mind and he will read it when he returns.

I remember how it sounded, the fire, eating up letters that my dad sent to Cloud on her birthdays and the kids' toys and their pillows. I remember the fire alarm being on. Could not remember these things the day of the fire or, even a month ago.

My step dad joked with me, "So it was Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and Tea?" He said it gave him insight to what those guys dealt with when it was happening. He feels that God was protecting me, and I agree. It wasn't my time.

I feel like I am putting the trauma and grief classes to work. It is bothersome-- I was going to help other people, not have these things happen to me! Now I am thinking that it is good that I experienced this-- not that I want to again, but it is good to understand what it is like to not be able to gather all the information while looking at it and react only to what one is able to take in. Will I be understanding to someone else who is having some other trauma?

After the fire, the first thing I went in for was a friends' letters which were so chemically saturated that they were toxic, but at least I got them out-- it was like saving my friend even though I had to throw them away, but no one else saw his confidences. I saved my little giraffe that I love but now smells of chemicals and I will probably toss it out even though I love it. Heirlooms, dolls that my artist grandmother made, are gone. I grieved my stuff and the loss of the house and the stability that it offered me. I cried for the first time over stuff when I realized that a particular family picture was gone for forever.

Now I am dealing with the event itself. I am seeing what happened and I feel good that I did the best I could with the information that I was able to take in. I am more freaked out by what could have happened than what did. I am lucky and blessed and it just wasn't my time to go and my children have their mother.

During the Christmas break, I was upset and thought that I was losing my mind because I could swear that I was seeing fire flickering on the wall, then around the 4th, realized that it was coming from a computer game! (I canceled the shrink-- maybe in a month or two from now, but it's not at the point that I need someone!) There was realistic fire being depicted on the monitor!

The kids are fine, mostly due to me trudging ahead and talking about it all in a frank manner. They know that I hurt and that it's all right.

The restoration business really upset me. We stood in the ruins of my house and talked about the new plans with their builder. I live next door to an ugly house with a bus used as a storage shed. (That is the one that belongs to the neighbour that ran around with her kids at the fire.) We told them that we wanted a second story, but to not affect the foundation because it was too much money and to keep it to less than $250,000. They sent us plans that seemed big, but we didn't have the dimensions of the old house. I looked at their portfolio and told my husband to ditch them because they made half million dollar homes as their starter houses! My husband liked them, and it turned out that we were being shown a $400,000 house! You don't put a palace next to a slum! You will never get your money's worth! What were they thinking? We got a bill. I want to tell them that after they give someone a huge house like that that the people feel like sh-- because anything else feels like they are merely ending up with something, but my husband wants to pay it and TELL THEM OVER THE PHONE! Like they will care? They'll justify themselves and make him feel small, give him the $5,000 for the plans that they didn't even creat for us and leave them alone.

Such is life. Let it go.

When he decides on a builder, I just want to be allowed to work with them on the kitchen and my art room. I have to have a big kitchen and place for my art stuff. I speak through my hands be it with paints, inks or fibers.

When I've had friends suffer tragedies, I have given them copies of a poem by Emily Dickinson. I have felt this way before during court battles with my ex husband and niscarriages and a car wreck where by the grace of God, everyone was ok. This is the poem and I have had it in my head for years, but now I know it. After a huge tragedy of monumental proportions, we all react a certain way. I have not been stone faced for the last four months-- I have laughed and played with the kids, but dealing with the fire was something different. I know what it is to have a "quartz contentment"-- smiling brightly, unable to waver out of a workable, livable mental state. I have tried talking to friends and one dominates the whole discussion with stories from high school (she is going back to where she graduated from and is excited-- it is OK, but annoying when telling her something deep!) and another's eyes glaze over. Few comprehend except for those who have been through it. There are variations between people in how we handle things, but it is probably about the same.



After great pain a formal feeling comes--


The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;

The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?

And yesterday--or centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round

A wooden way

Of ground, or air, or ought,

Regardless grown,

A quartz contentment, like a stone.



This is the hour of lead


Remembered if outlived,


As freezing persons recollect the snow--


First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

After two stories of alleged child abuse appeared in the paper in two days, I was wondering what the alleged abusers in each case were thinking. Did a certain man from Mat-Su really think that slapping his baby girl would make her want to eat her oatmeal and peas? What was the logic of the then-25 year old in trying to make a 15 month old (whose mind is just developing) perform any task? If she had failure to thrive, why didn’t he know what food to give her that she might enjoy? What kind of psychology were the two Anchorage men applying to the five year old in an odd child care arrangement and entrusted to them by “trying to scare the sh—“ out of a little boy to “toughen” him up with a “redneck flamethrower”?


What these men did was terrible, but I want to ask about something that goes back further. Why were they not taught better? I am not interested in warehousing and wasting lives in prisons; with some heinous, ignorant crimes being committed, there comes a point where there seems to be a need for basic family education classes in addition to or perhaps instead of health and personal finance in high school. In the old days, it was called home economics, but now it is often renamed Family and Consumer Sciences and covers everything from clothing repair, hygiene, cooking and nutrition to budgeting, child and human development and working within the community.

When I was in high school, I laughed at a poster of a girl of an indeterminate teenaged age. She was holding a darling baby and looking all forlorn with a caption underneath her stating, “Parenthood is like being grounded for 18 years.” I don’t know of anyone who was persuaded to use birth control by the poster. Some of us just loved kids and enjoyed babysitting and didn’t see it as a problem. Sex has been around for a long time and teenagers having sex is not going to go away. Whether or not to have abortions or use birth control is a matter of what the family teaches, but how to successfully run a household is a science and the schools need to prepare students for it, whether or not they have children.

Supporting yourself is tough enough, but raising a family is a hundred times harder. Most people will engage in premarital relations and whether they do or not is immaterial because almost all of the kids leaving high school will have to support themselves or be responsible for someone else. Sex can cause babies. Choosing between an abortion and having a baby is like choosing between jumping off a cliff and doing an infinite decathlon. Like jumping off a cliff, the decision ends right there. For the decathlon, as with a child, you have responsibility for it as you push on with new choices and events being thrown at you every few hours even when it’s slow. By teaching students (preferably freshmen) about the basics of home economics, they can be better prepared to handle the decisions, be it about family planning and other life choices that they will have to make for the rest of their lives.

When I read of the parents who abuse their children or who have made choices on behalf of their children that are out of society’s range of comprehension, I wonder what kind of training they had to prepare them for parenthood and for managing their lives. Did they know what raising a child and family would entail?

I wonder how many obstetricians and midwives watch babies being born, all born with essentially the same “stuff,” go home and cry (or drink off the feeling) fearing that the parents will watch a bundle of potentialities be snuffed out by ignorance.

By mandating home economics classes, school districts can make a positive investment in the next generation and future of our children.

Building up. . .

We got our insurance for our house today-- now we can look at building. My husband has an appointment with the bank on Friday, which will probably result in yet another appointment with them, given how they do things. We don't come out ahead-- we get to (God willing) get a bigger loan and build a bigger home. My husband is pretty much doing this and he asks me to look like he is asking me-- but this is really his project and there is nothing that I can do about it. He is considering letting me have an area where I can have a livingroom that doubles for yoga, which is nice, but he can dream all he wants until I ask if we can do something and he gets irritated with me and says something like, "Tea, we are really pushing it financially!"

Disasters are not good for fragile situations. He has the loan.

Unfriending People on Facebook

Probably one of the oddest things I have had to do is unfriend people that I don't like. One of the events happened right before my house burned down. She was a lady from my church's sister church and she'd always been witty and funny so I had invited her to be my friend. What happened after that was a rediculous mess where I started hating FaceBook. Somehow, she turned every conversation in to something about her. At the age of 47, she thought she was still cute fir being under 4'10" and called herself "a real firecracker!" in a conversation that had nothing to do with her or her height. . . and managed to turn other conversations into all about her. I am old to say this, but I posted a status with something like, "OMFG! My laundry is done!" She asked what the F meant. . . since she is the daughter-in-law of a guy who is considered a great writer in our church, the comment was meant to be as catty and as passive aggressive as I took it. A comment on my page about my funny kids turned into her talking about her kids who are all a year ahead academically. (But are under psychological care for what I think is probably learned behavior from her." I unfriended her after just a few days because I started bracing myself for her to post.

A few days after my house fire, she, the co-owner of a business that is doing well, said that she wanted to help me out. I declined and declined and finally told her in a message, "I don't like you. You annoy me and you have made me hate Face Book with your comments. While I appreciate your offer to help me, my expression is not for sale."

Today, a friend that I had made a few months ago through another friend, a young man who lives overseas and who wants to study in the States, instant messaged me. He was asking me about social mores and customs and seemed to be dreaming about living in the States for a while and asked me a pretty detailed question about intimacies. I unfriended him, in spite of his apology. I wonder if he was just trying o figure out Americans, but he knows that I am twice his age (at least) and I was pretty offended. I realized thatI had know idea who he was and he had access to my life on my page.

I realized that I knew few on my page and it spooked me.

Mommy to Martha Graham

We had a function with the school the other night and Starshine had to put a poncho over her head and dance with it. At one point she asked if she could get toilet paper out of the bathroom and run with it-- at least she asked. She thought it would be cool to have toilet paper flying overhead!

I have a thing for covering my hair but I don't do it very often now. Starshine was trying to get me to put a napkin over my head when this photo was taken. She was telling me how pretty I'd look and I was giving her a giant smile and asking, "Prettier than this?"

Bunches of these were taken by Darrin and I drew some charactures of myself based on them, all with heavey eyelids and gargantuan teeth! I have some with a "sweenky eye"expression that are hilarious. I never saw myself as I do now!

The event was a dinner at their school. We had a dessert auction and all the kids served. Several of them, including Basil, got to practice their auctioneering skills which got better as the evening wore on. As much as I love my children, I stress out in the crowds. There is another dinner coming up that Bash volunteered me to cook at and told everyone how good I am at it. Go I shall, as long as I am not sitting in the midst of a couple hundred children and adults!

At one point I looked around to find Calamity Jane and then I saw her off in a corner with a friend. They were in yoga tree position and holding still. Later I asked her why they were doing it for so long and she explained, "We wanted to see who could hold the position longer and quieter." This morning, a Saturday, my kids were up at 6AM (they'd sleep till noon every school day) and I suggested that they try competitive yoga and Calamity Jane said, "These are the wrong people!" OK, combat yoga is out!