A Calling

I envy.  Probably more than I like to admit,but I have been envious.  Not jealous or catty and bitchy and certainly not about everything.  Not really about the things that one would think.  I don't care if someone has better clothes or shoes or gets to meet famous people, unless it's Madonna or Oprah (yes, I am as easy as that) or makes more money.  There are two areas, however, where I have been blindingly obsessed with others' success.  Unable to fathom, pained, and like a deer in headlights, unable to look away.


I don't kid when I say this.  It actually hurts to confess, feels like pulling off a sticky plaster from a still festering wound but I know that without the air it will never heal.  When I see people, anyone really, but mostly daughters, girls, young and old, being loved and adored unconditionally, caressed, stroked, held by the hand, touched on the cheek and told that they are special, when it is so visible, so public, I go bonkers! 


Sitting on an airplane coming back from Thanksgiving, a woman my age and her mother sat in the row behind the girls, holding hands and weeping.  From what I could gather, they were saying goodbye to another family member and were heartbroken.  The mother stroked her daughter's hair and wiped her tears and whispered something to her in a language I did not recognize and I saw this woman soften and relax into her mother's arms.  I looked at my people, across the aisle from me, and loved them so much that tears didn't well up, they exploded onto my face.  I glanced at the mother and daughter one row behind us and offered a smile.  They accepted it and I sighed into myself.


When I was in college, a dear friend who lived in the room next door to mine, called her father nightly.  Nightly!  She would regale him with stories of her day and of the interesting characters she'd met, and there were plenty, and every night there was a sign off that sounded to me like, "I love you.  No, I love you more.  No, I love YOU more.  I love YOU."  It was maddening.  It made me roll my eyes and tell her she was not ready for this world.  My eighteen year old self actually told her this.  How obvious it must have been to her, to anyone really looking that I was a raving jealous lunatic. 


That kind of love makes one feel solid, attached, connected and able to do anything.  They say things like, "I believe I can fly!"  But I never, ever believed that kind of foolishness.  I can't fly.


 And since I know that I can't fly, how could I believe that I could do whatever I put my mind to?  How could I discover my calling and never deviate from it, no matter how undermined, frightened, or prodded to try something else I'd been?   I admire that courage, that passion, that drive, and that sense of value and worth in others.  And I envy it.  I want it.  To feel in one's soul what one has been called to do in this blip of time on Earth, to do it, no matter the consequences, even believing, dare you! that what you do and what makes you happy can and should be one and the same?  I would never have believed that.


There are silver linings on even the darkest clouds.  Whilst in Barbados, I was forced to reassess all the BS I had been fed throughout my life.  I spent so much time alone, in the proverbial cave, looking at myself and my life and my choices.  I want to say that it was so incredibly moving to discover all of this, but truthfully, it was miserable and painful and I often found myself short of breath.  From the outside looking in, I could not believe how disconnected I'd become to my essence, to the part of me that feels and loves and is driven by love, humanity, life.  What was most difficult was that I didn't know what to do nor to whom I could talk about it.  So I wrote.  I kept a journal.  I started the blog.  I wrote in the voice in which I speak, with some formality, some slang, impassioned, sometimes impolite, sometimes crass and childish, but always honest.  This is stuff of record.  But then I did something else. 


When I stopped writing City Mom (http://citymominthejungle.blogspot.com/), I kept a journal by my bed should I be pestered by some idea in the middle of the night and need to expel it in order to properly rest.  That journal is filled with illegible scribble that somehow, when called upon, I can decipher.  One night before Christmas, the night we'd brought our tree home, Didier and I were awakened to a horrific crash.  The girls, God bless them, slept through the entire episode.  But Didier and I were both up in a flash, racing to the living room anticipating an intruder or ceiling collapse.  There on the floor, with broken ornaments, water, and pine needles, lay our tree.  Hours earlier when I'd asked Didier if he was sure the base was wide enough, he had convinced me that not only was he certain but that he had "done an incredible job putting up the tree."  As I muttered under my breath something about hating to be right all the time, a character came to mind. .  She lead me to a story.  It had little form at first.  Began as a stream of consciousness and took shape slowly.  It is gaining momentum and excites me daily.  I have been more and more courageous each day and that has strengthened my belief that this, writing, will lead me to who I am.   


I have been called to words.  To write.  And every day I get up and smile at the possibilities, even after cursing out the mundane and bitching about the stagnant life of a suburban housewife.  I try to put down just three pages a day and though I cannot say that each day brings genius, most don't, I can say that each day brings promise.  Each day connects me to the source.  And each day, I see that source as love.  And there is room in it for me.


(c) Copyright 2012.  Repatriated Mama:Back to the Suburban Grind.