goodstateofmind.com

There are people who like to garden—me. And there are people who are master gardeners. My neighbor, Miss Debbie, is a master gardener or maybe a Garden Grande Dame. I call her Miss Debbie, because she’s my retired eye doctor’s wife, and I call him Dr. Miller. She’s the first lady of my eyeballs so she needs a title too, plus Miss Debbie has a very first lady, “don’t take no shit,” feel about her. She was her husband’s front desk gatekeeper at his optometry practice and very good at her job. If Miss Debbie had been in charge of the door at our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021, we’d have never known anyone visited that day, and Miss Debbie would have been wearing someone’s coonskin cap at the dinner table that evening. 

Her keen landscaping vision is apparent. By looking at her front yard, you can see her eye for balance. She has different heights and textures of plants and flowers, areas of her yard are of varying elevations, some areas mounding, some lower. Everything flows into the next with the perfect juxtaposition. She has big rocks strategically placed throughout, and her flowers cling to them and swoon over them like damsels on a fainting couch. Dammit, I never know where to put the rocks. 

She mixes shrubbery with flowers, perennials with annuals, spiky growing things with low roundeth growing things, and it all works so beautifully. Roundeth is my word, don’t look it up. 

I have a perennial bed at the end of my driveway that I sweat hours in every year, and no matter what I do it still mimics a badly laid out charcuterie board or maybe a pizza with all the supreme toppings. Stuff grows everywhere, it grows into areas that it wasn’t supposed to. Plants grow taller than they were planned, throwing shade on my sun-lovers causing them to reach for life and get leggy. Everything in my perennial bed is touch and go, it’s like the ICU out there. In the hot summer, it’s more like hospice care. I’m just trying to give them dignity until they meet their maker in August or miraculously go to seed where I don’t want them to. I have learned perennials like to move themselves. If they reseed themselves, you might as well let them stay where nature puts them because when you try to move them they will drama queen themselves right into emergency hospice and the compost pile. 

The weeds are a constant battle. Years ago when designing the perennial bed I laid down landscaping cloth on top of the ground as weed control. The weeds laughed at it. I now have weeds that grow on top of the landscaping cloth as a big f-you, and I pluck them out by hand as a little f-you back. We do this all summer, the weeds and I. My very sore thigh muscles will tell you. 

But when I walk past Miss Debbie’s yard, there are no weeds. I don’t know why, but I’m guessing they’re a little scared of her.

And I look for them. I look for any evidence of imperfection in that Mrs. Optometrist garden utopia. I am always comparing her flowers, her design, the amount of sun she gets where, to what I’m dealing with over in my messy pizza garden. 

I tell Miss Debbie frequently that I covet her garden. She’ll stop sometimes as she leaves the neighborhood, roll down her window and say hello. I always make her sorry she did so because I get into one of my diatribes about my flower woes and she will finally jump in and say “gotta go!” and I know I did it again. I can’t help myself, I feel like she’s such a vast source of knowledge and artistic mystery that I want to gulp it all down like I do chips and queso on a Friday night. I want her tips, her expertise, her secrets to a beautiful organized, without looking too organized, luscious garden yet I run her off every time like I spooked a deer. People who run other people off, raise your hand here. 

Recently I walked past Miss Debbie’s house to drop something off to another neighbor, and as I strolled back to my house I slowed down. I was taking in her spiky liriope grass, placed perfectly next to her sculpted Japanese boxwood, so sculpted it looks as if it’s wearing a parochial school uniform, starched and pressed. 

She also has a cool mailbox. An ordinary Home Depot mailbox that leans just enough to the right to make you ask yourself if it’s leaning to the right like mine (spoiler alert, it is) would not be acceptable for the Garden Debbie Spectacular. Oh no, she has a cool iron mailbox on a pedestal that reminds me of something you’d see in a bank on Gunsmoke. It looks like you’d need a doorman with a ring of keys to open it for you. My crooked mailbox usually has ants in it. 

I was just barely shuffling past Miss Debbie’s, at a snail’s pace, soaking up all the self-loathing I could for my gardening inadequacies when I saw it… 

A weed. 

There. Peeking out from the shade of that Japanese Boxwood’s pleated skirt was a little green sprout of tremendous insult. It was not even sorry for its presence, like a drunk uncle staggering into the wedding and then loudly protesting to the bride how beautiful she looked during a moment of silence at the altar. How dare him. 

I was in shock at the audacity of this weed. I looked around to see if there was anyone to share in my disbelief. I stood and stared at it for a second and then quickly bent down and snatched it out of the crack between the mulch and the curb much like my future daughter-in-law did when one of my hairs unveiled itself in my cherry cobbler just as I dished up the first serving. She grabbed it as if it never existed, no one saw it, and it was never mentioned again. I knew my future DIL was a keeper long before that hair-in-the-cherry-cobbler incident, but it was just more evidence that she was my people. I’d be worried that my family will never eat my cherry cobbler again after reading this, but they are not one of my four readers. Bully for them. 

I silently plucked out that arrogant weed and finished walking home with the little dead intruder scrunched in the palm of my hand. On arrival I appropriately disposed of the body as any murderer should. I would have thrown it into my garden to scare my weeds, but I didn’t want the other weeds learning from such a skilled invader plus I figured with my luck it would resurrect itself seeing as my garden is a disco ball nightclub for weeds. 

Then I laughed at how offended I was that that weed had the nerve to invade Miss Debbie’s garden and how quick and comfortable I was to grab it. It felt slightly heroic, oddly. Not like I’d stopped a runaway baby carriage heroism, but the I told someone they had spinach in their teeth kind. 

And then I got to thinking how sometimes, we need someone to pluck the proverbial weeds out of our life’s garden too. We all have weeds creeping in from all directions. Beloved brothers get horrible cancer, our friends go through heartbreaking divorces, they lose jobs unfairly or are forced to move to new cities to stay employed, the people we love fall in love with other people sometimes, friends die leaving tremendously grief stricken spouses behind, wouldn’t it be nice if we could pluck those issues out of their lives like weeds that had to go. We’re walking along…Oh, look at that! you need back surgery? Nope. Pluck! And then, as anyone who has ever fed a baby says, “All gone!”

I frequent a little family-owned plant nursery close to my house. They always have really rare and unusual plants. It’s hot as a terrarium in hell, smells like wet dirt, and you actually walk in wet dirt, but I love it. I don’t spend much money there because my discomfort usually wins out before my weakness for buying plants that I don’t need does, and I run with my two items to my air-conditioned car. 

The last time I was there, I left my garden mid-planting and went to grab another couple of plants, toppings, so I could make my super supreme pizza yard look even more pizza-y. I showed up in my gardening shorts that have a hole in the back, right at the top of my booty crack. 

Now to a HOA swim and tennis neighborhood, crooked Home Depot mailbox gal like me, they are an eclectic group of knowledgeable, quinoa-bowl-eating, dirty finger-nailed, very gentle souls who run this nursery. I love their dreadlocks and Scooby-Doo vibe. They’re the kind who carry the spider out of the house on a flip flop made out of recycled baby diapers so the spider can flourish and find himself. They’re going to wear old dirty Birkenstocks to your daughter’s wedding, and look adorable doing it. There’s just nothing to not love about them. 

So as I carried my one item to my car, one of the young female employees followed behind me in silence with my other item. I could feel it. I knew she was staring at the hole in my shorts. 

We load up my items and as I’m closing the back of my car she draws her hands up to her chin, prayerfully and says, “I’m going to tell you something, and please don’t think I’m weird and I hope this doesn’t offend you, but if it were me I’d want someone to tell me.” 

I chuckled. I knew what was coming. 

She bravely delivered the blow. “You have a hole in your shorts.” 

That kind of heroism, again. 

And just for the record, this is about the time Miss Debbie would wave and drive off in my story…

But how many times a day do we get the chance to pick the weed out of someone else’s garden, or tell them they have a hole in their shorts? How many opportunities do we get to show that little momentary tittle of love, caring or kindness. 

Do we pass them up? Do we even see them? 

Sadly, we can’t always pluck the really bad weeds out of each other’s lives. The cancer, the grief, the divorce and dandelion-sized misfortune is delivered on sterling silver trays and only God can flip those trays over onto the floor. 

And maybe since we can’t control these big weeds, God gives us the little ones as His way of letting us help Him. Not that He needs our help, but maybe He gives us the little easy weeds thinking, “Surely they can’t screw this up,” after all, His day is pretty full. 

Anne Lamott writes, “Life is such a mystery that you have to wonder if God drinks a little.” 

And who would blame Him? This world is a tough day at the office. 

So I wonder if we’re given these little weeds along the way, even in the most seemingly perfect gardens, as tiny opportunities to help take care of someone, to support, as an “I got you.” And since God knows we are not perfect or unselfish He offers us a little feeling of heroism to go with it as a reward.

Or maybe we’re given them once in a while because God’s on the couch after a long night of worldly despair and He just needs us to lovingly brush the hair out of each other’s eyes occasionally as He sleeps it off. 

I don’t know, but I can tell you with utmost certainty 187 new weeds have emerged in my garden in the length of time it took you to read this so if any of you are walking by… 

I’m ba-a-a-ck. 

After some major technical issues with my blog website that took some effort to finally get fixed and a few more of life’s obstacles over the last couple of years I’m finally sitting at my keyboard again, and it feels right. Writers know when we’re “off,” we know when we can sit down and it’ll pour out of us, and we also know when our creative pipeline is clogged we might as well sit on a bed of fire ants because that’s as pleasant as the writing experience is going to be. 

And because I think everything happens as it’s supposed to, and when it’s supposed to, I also think I needed these last couple of years to clear out my mind and heart so maybe the website being all kinked up was just the forced hiatus I needed. 

But it’s all working and my brain has been cleaned out and reorganized much like an episode of Hoarders after they send in the hazmat crew. The thoughts can flow now, sentences can form, and lucky you, can once again be privy to my meanderings. 

All four of you. 

And I recently found out my mother isn’t even one of the four. 

Many of you know that I lost my best friend in January. She died suddenly and unexpectedly during a two week battle with the flu. Don’t worry, this is not a blog post about her. I could write an epistle on what she meant to me and many others, but it would fall short so I won’t even try. 

This is also NOT a blog entry about grief. The pain of losing someone who is a huge part of your daily life and who you loved dearly seems unbearable at times. That’s news to no one reading this. Life doesn’t spare any of us. We all face it eventually. Grief isn’t new or rare or even profound. Grief is just grief. 

What I never realized about losing someone you love is this other hidden layer in the middle—like a bad cream filling—I learned how painful it is to lose a person you love, but also a person who loves YOU right.

I never knew there was a distinction with respect to grief, between the two, loving and being loved, until I experienced the loss of it. 

This is about being loved.

This person. You love them so much. You enjoy them. You laugh with them, make years of memories with them. You cry with them when you need it. You call them first to share your child’s engagement news, that your divorce is final, to tell them your funny airport security story or they call you to let you know that the corner vegetable stand finally has decent tomatoes. All that becomes your normal, every day safety routine. You love them, and they do love you. It’s great and everyone should have that. Everyone should have that person. Some lucky folks have several. 

But then there’s those few precious ones who you get in your life, you love them dearly, but they’re different because not only do they love you, but they love you exactly the way you need to be loved. 

They just know how to love you right. 

When you are sad or pissed off and you share it, and you’re sitting in that emotional washtub of cold dirty water they can get in it with you and by the time you are finished with your story they’re just as pissed off as you are—maybe even more. They are your cheerleader, your forehead kisser, your pat on the back person and your make-it-all-better person. Even when they can’t make it all better, they give you the illusion that they can, and for that second it feels like relief. They are that net when you get pushed off the edge, and you know without a doubt when you call them, they are going to say the very words that you need to hear. Every single time they are going to get it, and get you…

Because they know how to love you right. 

They’ve paid attention. They’ve seen you vulnerable. They know where your weaknesses are and they protect and coddle them as if they were their own. They don’t secretly hold onto your insecurities so they can use them to wound you later as an act of superiority or to one-up you. They hold little you and your shortcomings in the palm of their giant King Kong hand, cupping you safely. They remind you of your greatness when you’ve forgotten. They shoot confidence into our veins when you have failed. And it all feels true and genuine. It feels umbilical as if they are giving you needed oxygen. 

Because they know how to love you. 

They don’t have a hidden agenda. They don’t just look like they’re your friend, while secretly being resentful or bitter. They are genuinely concerned for your welfare and your emotional state, and your happiness means everything imaginable to them as if it was linked to their own source of life’s energy. Looking into the eyes of someone who knows how to love you is seeing pride looking back at you even on your worst, most worthless day. They make you feel like your greatness was achieved by being born, by existing, and your exhaled breath is keeping them alive. 

Because they know this is how you should be loved. And they know how to do it. 

Not everyone can do this. In fact I’d bet that most people have no clue how to love the people that they have made a life with. I would also bet that a lot of people have sadly navigated their entire life without a person who really knows how to love them. If we’re lucky, we have people who try, and those people should be held onto for dear life and given credit for wanting to love us correctly because “wanting to and trying” are half the battle. We should be grateful for those trying so desperately to love us right, because it’s so much easier not to try. They shouldn’t be given a Participation trophy, but a MVP trophy. They’re there. They’re trying. They’re missing it sometimes but they’re also getting it right as best as they can. They just don’t know how to love us right and it’s not necessarily their fault. 

But here’s the dearness of those people who DO know how to love us right—their little secret—they ultimately teach us how to love ourselves. They show us how we deserve to be loved. They show us that our value is infinite and measureless. Our talents and abilities are unique. Our energy and our place in this world—unmatched and vital. Their appreciation for our existence is not conditional on what we can do for them or how they can benefit from having us in their lives. They just love us correctly because that’s what they were put on this earth to do. 

And when they are done with their mission, when they are sure they have successfully convinced us that we are the most magnificent human being that they always knew we were, they will leave. They will leave us to love ourselves completely. Where there once were holes or frayed bits of our soul needing to be tucked in and patted sweetly, there will now be sturdy seams holding us. Even though they will leave us, they will leave us better than we were because they knew how to love us. 

If grief is the price for being loved like that, I will pay. 

_______________________________________________________________

“I love Shelly. She always makes you feel like a million bucks!”

–a quote by many 

April.

The month in which Spring starts to warm us all up and take its hold on everything living. Its blooming flowers, budding trees, and nesting birds renew our spirit after the chill. It’s also a time of Spring Break beach trips, senior proms and college acceptance letters—or sometimes disappointing college letters.

April starts the crescendo of a student’s senior year. It’s a time of excitement, future plans, hopes and dreams for graduates. Parties begin and memories are made as they count down the seconds to that proud cap and gown moment. It’s been coming all year for them, and now it’s almost here. They’ve studied, they’ve tested, they’ve sweated final exams, AP exams, ACT exams and SAT exams. It’s as if the entire world wants another opportunity to fry their brain one more time before they leave high school.

Emotions can run high in a lot of households senior year. There are important decisions to be made by young people who are still leaving the stove on after making their mac and cheese and parents who are walking the line between speaking up and keeping quiet about so many considerations. As a parent, you don’t want to influence them too much, but you don’t want them to miss an opportunity either. You don’t want to deny them, but you also have to be realistic about college tuition, expenses, long distance travel, and what type of college is a match for your child. I think there were more tears shed in our house during our oldest daughter’s senior year than all the other child-rearing years combined.

But let me clarify—those tears were mine.

None of what I mentioned above is a surprise to any parent. You know all that is coming as you navigate through the high school years, but you get a sudden jolt into it when the school asks you to order your child’s cap and gown and graduation invitations the first week of school. The first week of school? I remember thinking “can’t they ease me into this, like cold water? Why do they have to slap me with cap and gown nonsense the first week?” Oh no, that bronco comes out of the gate bucking wide open, and he’s wearing a tassel.

And then it’s an entire school year of “lasts.” The last first day of school, the last school pictures, the last football game, soccer game, volleyball game, Homecoming…and the list goes on. Us mothers recite this to ourselves over and over that senior year. It’s as if we need to say it to make it official, to make it accepted—in our hearts.

I was the type of mother who put my kids on the bus on the first day of kindergarten with hardly a flinch. They were excited, and I was excited for them. No tears for either of us. Then I managed through all the years of school, the plays, the music programs, parent teacher conferences, lunches, homework, football games, cheer, dance, baseball taking it all in stride, never emotional about any of it, but just checking it off as if it were on a list. I was “all business” as a mom, so imagine how surprised I was when my daughter’s senior year I was suddenly “all unglued.”

I’m not talking a little warm tear squeaking out unnoticed at senior night escorting our daughter onto the football field, oh no. I’m talking sobbing,   snot-flinging, spit-stringing, nose-blowing, congested, swollen lips, eyes that looked like they’ve been used as a punching bag, still in my bathrobe at 3:00 when your kids come home—kind of unglued.

That was me. Every single day of her senior year.

It started the second she left the house on “the last first day of school.” Everyday I got all 3 kids off to school, and as soon as they left I would feel a dark veil fall over me like a weighted blanket. At first I was so caught off guard. What was going on? This has to be normal? I’m sure this will pass, right?

I’m not an overly, outwardly, emotional person being from a family of southern women who see crying as a weakness so I couldn’t identify this alien emotion that was possessing me. The agony that took place in my mind and heart that year was grippingly painful.

Some of my thoughts that tormented me:

We will never be a family of five again.

The dynamic of our family is forever changing.

The dinner table will never be the same.

What if she never comes back home?

What if she gets homesick?

What if something bad happens and I’m not there?

She is NOT ready yet.

I felt so ripped off by life that year. I felt as if I had just been “renting” a daughter and now suddenly the lease was up. The world was taking her back from me, and I wasn’t done with her yet. I still had so much to teach her, to prepare her for. I felt overwhelming heartache and panic at the thought of letting her go.

I was genuinely pissed at a friend of mine who had gone through her son’s senior year the year before and had not mentioned any of this horror to me. How could she not tell me? I mean sincerely miffed…and at the same time I realized how irrational that was to be mad at her for MY emotions. They certainly weren’t her fault or her problem. I was so overwhelmed by the complexity of my emotions I was looking for something or someone to blame them on or a way to explain them. I’m the mother who always has it together, what in the world is wrong with me?

And then after weeks and weeks of the kids coming home to snotty mom who’s still in her bathrobe, I was visited by a friend. When I opened the door, he quickly looked at his watch and at me in my bathrobe, and at his watch again.

“Shut up, yes I know it’s 2:00, and yes I know I’m still in my pajamas.”

He lovingly stepped into my mental and emotional breakdown with both feet as only a dear friend can do. I sobbed to him. He laughed. He made me laugh. And as I talked my senseless mama babble through my drool and snot and countless tissues he just sat there, listening and finally took a deep breath.

“You’ve just never had these emotions before. Your mind and your heart don’t know what they are or what to do with them. That’s why you’re having such a hard time with all this. You’re processing feelings that you don’t recognize. Best thing to do is just lean into it.”

I didn’t want to hear that. I wanted some magic advice to make me stop crying. I was going through a box of tissues a day something had to be done.

“Lean into it.” I thought that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. He was a retired Marine so I was wholeheartedly expecting him to say “suck it up Princess, now blow your nose and go get your shoes, let’s go for a run,” but his advice was just lean into it.

I thought hard about his words as everyday continued to be me sitting at home alone, sobbing, still going through box after box of tissues. The people at Kimberly Clark really should have sent me a thank you note that year.

Lean into it.

So lean into it I did. Hard.

I decided to make a graduation video for our daughter.

So from that point on every day was spent sobbing even harder as I sifted through eighteen years of photos and then put them all in a montage to sweet, sentimental, completely heart-wrenching, music. I wondered some days if you could die from crying? I had already proven to myself you could throw up from crying, but could you cry all the moisture out of your body and die of dehydration? I didn’t eat. I didn’t drink. I just cried. All day.

I hardly cooked dinner making 2010 a banner year for our local Domino’s. Everyday was a 24-hour headache, and I stayed so congested I didn’t breathe through my nose from August until May of that year. I didn’t care. I was leaning into it.

When the video was finished I would watch it several times a day. And sob.

By April that year I had started getting out of my bathrobe and dressing again. My daughter had a last minute acceptance to a college she really wanted to attend so we had a lot of chaotic energy with that which also helped to distract me from what was lurking.

What if at Graduation I collapse from crying? Embarrass my whole family?

And I was so scared of the emotion I was going to feel leaving her at her college dorm.

What if I fell apart?

What if they had to physically pull me off of her?

What if I couldn’t do it?

I kept saying to myself, “just lean into it, it’s just an emotion you’ve never felt before.”

Now—let me clarify. My daughter was going to a college 30 minutes away from home. But I can tell you to a mother who was a basket case like I was, it didn’t matter where she was going.

Graduation was fine. Proud. Exciting. I didn’t even shed a tear because I had none left.

College move-in day was awkward. My daughter and I both felt the pressure of the goodbye coming all day, and it was making us a little short on patience as we put together her futon and unpacked her.

I heard “Mom, just let me do it.” And I knew that was my cue.

It was time to say our goodbyes and leave her there.

Hugging at the curb is a rite of passage for parents when they leave their kids at college. They walk you out, you hug, and you watch them get smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror until they look like a toddler again, and you turn the corner. And promptly fall apart.

Just like the love you felt when you first held them as a newborn, their absence in that second is immediate.

I relive all this not to be sappy, but for the moms who have been faking that smile while their kid is so excited about leaving home or think they are the only ones who have spent the last few months secretly slobbering into their bathrobes.

You are not.

It’s a passage of time. The end of an era. It hurts. But don’t swallow down your emotions right now. Let yourself feel every bit of it. After all you’ve put into this child, haven’t you earned the right to feel and process the emotions that come with letting them go? And it’s true, it’s all emotion you’ve never felt before which is rare because by the time you’re our age you think you’ve felt it all, but really… thank God we haven’t.

And a few days after you drop them off, when you get that first text message from them that reads “everything’s great!” it’s a bittersweet nod to the fact that when they go they aren’t supposed to be ready.

And neither are you.

Just lean into it.

Congratulations to all the graduates and all the mamas who survive it.

Now go get a tissue.

We all have fears. Collectively, humans have a fear of heights, fear of small spaces, fear of public speaking, fear of abandonment, fear of dogs. We acknowledge them and occasionally have to work through them to conduct our lives. I’m not a huge fan of flying, but after downing three vodkas at the airport bar at 6 a.m. I have faked bravery and managed to get on a plane many times. I have no real desire to overcome this fear, because it doesn’t affect me that often, and the airport bar is never out of my coping mechanism.

I have had one fear my entire life that does haunt me however. Sadly this fear is also the same response I give people when someone asks me “What’s your dream job, if you could do any job in the world, what would it be?”

Singing.

More specifically, sitting at a piano or with a guitar, singing sad songs about broken hearts and broken dreams in a dark corner of some forgotten little hotel bar in the middle of nowhere—maybe even at that airport bar.

Some of my friends reading this are nodding their heads because they know my fear of singing in public. They know that I fear it so much that I can’t even enjoy others doing it. I will turn my chair in a bar on open mic night to face away from the stage, and if you want me to leave your house just suggest “How about some karaoke?” If you take one step in the direction of that microphone I’m already in my car and halfway down the block. I get a knot in my stomach at the thought of it, even at the thought of someone else doing it.

I can’t enjoy the bar up the street from me when they have musical artists perform. I’m uncomfortable the whole time. My heart will race. I’ll reposition my chair. I’ll ignore them to the point of being rude.

It’s not that I’m trying to be rude. It’s actually the opposite. I’m so overly empathetic to them that I want to make it easier for them. It’s as if I want to say “Never mind me, don’t be nervous, I’m not looking, see, not looking!” I’m so nervous for them that I feel a little sick inside.

They get up in front of a room packed with strangers, and they do my dream job. They fulfill my fantasy and have a blast doing it, as  I hide like a cat under the bed.

This is a recurring scenario in my life and often times the reason I shy away from live music.

The fear causes me to miss out. It makes me squirm and experience unpleasant anxiety symptoms while my friends are kicking back, feeling the music, letting loose and enjoying themselves.

When my kids were babies, I sang to them. I sang with them. We sang in the car to silly songs that annoyingly stayed in my head for hours. I rocked them to sleep and sang a Linda Ronstadt song to them every night (I’m sure they don’t remember). They never judged my singing ability. They loved it. I loved doing it.

One time we had friends staying with us and after singing my son to sleep I rejoined them in the living room. My friend said, “I heard you singing through the baby monitor. It was so sweet. Do you do that every night?”

I was mortified. My evening was so preoccupied by the fact that I had forgotten about the baby monitor and had carelessly allowed someone to hear me singing that I could hardly engage with my friends the rest of the night.

Recently, in a moment of brash insanity I reached out to a vocal coach inquiring about voice lessons. I told her briefly of my paralyzing fear, and how I wanted to challenge myself to overcome it, step out of my comfort zone. I actually used the phrase “might throw up” in my initial email and hit SEND. It felt like I had bungee jumped off a tower.

That was nothing compared to the adrenaline rush and immediate anxiety I felt when I received her response the next day. “See you Wednesday at 3:15.”

Oh shit.

Wednesday came (very quickly as I was dreading it) and I arrived to her studio in a bundle of nerves. Shaking, my stomach in knots, sweating…

The first thing she did was give me a pretty intense pep talk. It felt more like I was in a therapy session than a voice lesson. It was a lot of listening and nodding and no singing. I was thinking, “she better make me sing today because if I leave and don’t sing I might not ever come back.” She must have heard my mental whispers because after some breathing lessons she sat at her keyboard and we began.

Keep in mind I had prefaced my meeting with, “I have no idea if I can sing. I’ve never tried.”

Her response was quick.

“Everyone can sing. And everyone should sing.”

Oh crap, here we go…

“Start with this,” she sang a string of vowel sounds as her keyboard played along.

I repeated them.

My heart pounded.

“Again…” and her keyboard played a different strand of notes.

I repeated.

“Again…”

“Again…”

After each she would play notes that sounded as if the keyboard was proclaiming “Tah-dah!”

“Again…”

“Tah-dah!”

“Again…”

Finally she stopped her torture on me. I thought I might need to sit down. My knees were weak. I felt dizzy.

She looks up from the keyboard and smiles, “Very good! You have about a 2.5 octave range. You’re a true alto and you’re going to be amazed at what you can do.”

“Oh well…um…I don’t really want to become a singer. I just want to overcome my fear of singing.”

She smiled, “Ok. We’ll see about that.”

What had I done? I saw it. I saw that little glimmer in her eye, like the teacher who was about to pass out the pop quiz.

So for a few months now, every Wednesday afternoon—I go to a voice lesson.

*that ka-thud you just heard is some of my friends fainting and hitting the floor*

And I hate it.

In fact, I hate Wednesdays so badly now that I hate Tuesdays too just in preparation. Am I singing well every week? Oh God no…sometimes I sound like the person I would turn my chair away from at the bar for fear of seeing their embarrassment. Do I feel super self-conscious, uncomfortable and sweaty singing in front of her?

Every. Single. Time.

It’s absolute agony if I’m being honest, but I’m there.

Recently, even before I started voice lessons, I had noticed some ringing in my left ear. As the ringing became more severe I decided to consult a specialist for it and after numerous tests, hearing evaluations and an MRI, it was discovered that I have a sizable blood vessel growing through a cluster of nerves in my ear giving me some nerve damage. Long story short, my ear ringing is because I am slowly losing my hearing in my left ear.

I sat in the car after the appointment with my ENT wearing a demo pair of hearing devices, shaking my head at the irony of my situation and wondering if I might cry. I have to “wonder” if I might cry before I cry because in my family of Southern women crying isn’t encouraged. I have to evaluate if something is “cry worthy,” and then give myself permission to cry. Sounds ridiculous, right? It is, but that’s just how us Southern women with years of specialized training in dysfunctional emotional patterns roll.

I decided that I didn’t need to cry over it, because… wait a minute….in reality it was a good reason to end my voice lessons—hot damn!

Hearing loss I’d like to introduce you to silver lining. I was getting out of that Wednesday afternoon session of suffering.

It was the “well I tried to sing, but look, I’m going deaf in one ear so I might as well just quit,” excuse and I was taking it all the way to the bank.

Or so I thought.

My voice teacher listened attentively as I gave my little sob story about losing my hearing and when I was finished said, “It’s ok. I have had several students who are hearing impaired over the years. You don’t need to be able to hear to sing. I’ll teach you… OK, lets start today off with some breathing exercises…”

She wasn’t having it.

I was stunned for a second. I paused, but then began my breathing and running my vocal scales just like any other lesson. She wasn’t giving me the chance to quit.

As I sang, I heard her voice on that first day “Everyone can sing, and everyone should sing.”

Then I heard my own voice in my head, “She’s right. Why are you holding back? Because you’re afraid you’ll embarrass yourself? Sing louder. Sing like you don’t care. Missy sing for yourself, use your voice, for once in your life don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks. Don’t be afraid of sounding bad, so what…don’t be afraid of messing up, don’t be afraid of being afraid!”

As I began to sing my rather horrendous rendition of a truly great song which I practice every week—and every week I manage to completely annihilate—I felt some of my hesitation lift, I felt some confidence budding, and some power and depth in my voice I’d never felt or heard before. I thought about the children she must teach (for I am her oldest student ever) who are singing without any shyness or trepidation, like only kids can do—some wearing cochlear implants, some who can’t hear their own voices when they sing, but they sing like nightingales in the shower nonetheless.

Afterwards my teacher looked at me and smiled,

“That’s the best I’ve ever heard you sing. Don’t ever tell me you can’t sing again.”

I left my lesson that day with so much more than knowledge on breathing, pitch and tone but the discovery of a voice I never even knew I had. The one I’ve kept muffled under the covers for fear of being too loud, being too much, being wrong, being bad, being afraid.

I realize now what those singers in the bars that used to make me uncomfortable realize. It makes no difference how you sing it’s just important that you sing. It’s freeing, almost spiritual, when you do something that you suck at, but you just do it anyway. The problem is by the time we reach adulthood, most of us have mastered the art of avoiding things we suck at, or think we suck at, or are afraid we might suck at.

So for now my new hearing devices and I are continuing on in our pursuit together just to sing, period. Because we SHOULD sing, and because my hearing loss is predicted to worsen, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to hear my own voice as it sounds now. I want to hear it as much as possible.

Maybe one day I’ll have the courage to pursue my dream job of singing in a dark corner of that lonely little hotel bar by the airport. And maybe I’ll suck at it.

Hell, I’ll be deaf anyway, I probably won’t even know.

Shew. We made it.

It was questionable at times wasn’t it? It was the proverbial rollercoaster ride for sure, but even worse it was one of those rollercoasters IN THE DARK.

You know the kind—you just start to lean to the left and all of a sudden you are pitched to the right with no warning. You can’t see the track. There’s no anticipation of what’s to come around the next turn. Your eyes can’t tell your brain what to expect. Are you going up? Are you doing down?

Nope, upside down!

And you can’t catch your breath between never-ending jolts until you finally feel the lunge and the brakes, and the track catches hold of the barf train. At last you slide into the station to the unloading platform—you exhale, brush the hair out of your face and find yourself reconsidering that corndog you had for lunch.

We were on that ride for over 12 months.                                                                              —except Disney didn’t design it and it wasn’t fun.

This time last year we were forced to take a sabbatical from most everything we rely on in life to bring us happiness and to sit alone with our thoughts. Sitting alone is one thing, but sitting alone with our thoughts? No, no. Humans hate that. We don’t do that.

At first, after we got over the initial toilet paper panic, we started to question it all. Information was coming in like rapid fire and as we processed we also quickly realized we had to “pick a side.” In the United States, you either believed the science behind the pandemic/quarantine/pathogen or you thought it was a mass media driven hoax/over dramatized/politically motivated. So now, not only were you alone with your quiet thoughts but you had warm cozy feelings of outrage to comfort yourself with.

Jerk to the left.

Wow, this is…getting fun. (nervous laugh)

Then you fought it. Pushed back against the reality of it all. Refused to accept it.

“I’m sure we’ll be over this by summer when we can all go outside, it’ll go away.”

Nope.

Jerk to the right.

Damn.

I’m the emotional one here, so sometimes the frustration (or wine) would overflow out of my cup, and spill all over the floor and I’d cry to be let off the ride much like I did at the Mid-South Fair when I was in fifth grade riding The Spider. The spinning cups on the end of The Spider’s arms were making me sick and I wanted off, but no one was listening to me from 30 feet up in the air, and everything just kept spinning.

Motion sick girl was just going to have to ride it out.

We were all following along as best we could and trying to keep up and take in the bits and pieces that made sense. But at some point, we had to throw our logical and emotional compass into the mix—a.k.a good old-fashioned gut instinct—and just go with that.

A lot of my personal turmoil came from my need to fix the situation, for me and everyone. If everyone would just “stay home, stay six feet away, stop traveling, wear masks, stop having parties…” made up a great deal of my thoughts. I was stuck in a loop of “I can fix this,” but the reality was I absolutely could not and even thinking about it kept me in that nauseatingly spinning cup on the arm of The Spider.

I couldn’t write anything. I could hardly work on my books. I couldn’t even write a blog entry because my anger and frustration were clouding my ingenuity. They were clogging up my creative flow and my inspiration.

After a while, I noticed that the news didn’t change or make anything better so I stopped reading it. My social media was cleaned out of anything that didn’t bring me joy. I realized that no one’s opinion (including my own) political or otherwise, mattered to anyone else so I stopped engaging. I figured out that my attempts to check in on my friends might have been somewhat selfishly motivated as an excuse to have my own connection with them that they didn’t necessarily need, so I stopped. Anytime someone thought they needed to tell me how I needed to manage the pandemic for my family I bowed out, departed from the interaction. And I finally called myself out on doing it to them too even if I was only doing it in my head—it had to work both ways. That energy was toxic and felt like just another whiplash in the dark.

So I started to embrace the situation and just sit alone with my thoughts more and more (the horror). Instead of trying to lean into the next turn that I couldn’t see coming and getting jolted every time,  I loosened my grip on the handrail and exhaled. I prayed more. I meditated some. I sat outside alone a lot, even in the winter. Instead of wrestling with healthy choices constantly,  I cooked and ate what I felt like eating. I relaxed. I quickly realized that much like relaxing your body when you’re in labor, or getting a Covid vaccination,  it just hurt less.

That’s when it began to turn. The rollercoaster started to slow down. The curves in the track started to become smoother.

I started to notice the drama fading. My outrage calmed. My resentment waned. The voices in my head quieted and took the turmoil with them. I started sleeping through the night with no anxiety stomach aches. My body released two kidney stones (maybe not as efficiently as it should have) and I was feeling emotionally unburdened of all the angst of being quarantined. My body was relaxing, but so was my soul.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to say “maybe the pandemic was a good thing.” It wasn’t. Millions of lives lost, businesses closed and so many lives negatively affected will forever be its legacy. I’m just wondering what we might carry with us from this wild ride as we move forward. I certainly know what I learned.

In addition to the misery of sitting alone with our thoughts, the strength that so many people had to find over the past year was agonizing. I had several friends lose parents or spouses during the quarantine. They couldn’t have their funerals. We all know weddings, graduations and other joyful milestones that were taken away. Kids had to attend school virtually. Marriages suffered. I know I reevaluated some of my relationships, and sadly ended some, that I never thought I’d have the strength to do. “Bumpy ride” doesn’t begin to put the past year into words.

Two days ago I got my second Covid vaccination. Afterwards it felt like that year-long jarring rollercoaster in the dark had gently pulled into that station on the sunniest, the brightest, of spring days more like the peaceful little kiddie train at the zoo.  I was finally offered a hand and asked to get off the ride and exit to the right.

As I walked out the soles of my feet were sliding inside my sandals from nervous sweat because I hate shots, but I was also overjoyed and felt like kissing every stranger in that store. I was actually a little teary-eyed thinking of how far we’ve come this past year, how much strength we had to find to hold onto the handrail at times, but maybe just leaning into the quiet, as much as we hate it, is where the real strength is found—that place where we can’t ignore our own voice over the sound of the rickety coaster on the noisy track.

Maybe that’s why we hate it, because now we know how strong we can be.

So a year ago, my husband and I made it a 2020 plan to relocate for a month to the beaches of Gulf Shores in March,  just to test out our snow-birding abilities. Translation: see if we can live together in a small condo and not kill each other.

And if you’ve read my blog about our traveling mishaps over the years you know that that usually means some weather phenomenon, disturbance or catastrophe starts to brew in the atmosphere. Weather meteorologists suit up, animals and birds seek higher ground, residents board up windows, medical facilities stock up their supplies, someone is going to lose a limb because…well…

The Hudgins are coming.

The closer we got this year to our trip the more excited we became because we’re apparently what you call S-L-O-W  L-E-A-R-N-E-R-S.

We started checking the weather daily, and it looked like perfect sunny temperatures for our arrival. We were giddy. On the way down I checked my weather app, saw temps in the ’70’s and actually said out loud “Ha!  take that! Bad luck, my ass!” Then I’m pretty sure I asked dismissively…

“Think this Corona virus is going to turn into anything?”

We both laughed carelessly, “ha ha ha…”

… right in Karma’s face.

Introducing! (Horns sound!)  Pandemic COVID-19! The 2020 catastrophic event of epic proportions…

Now our plan all along was to spend the month at the beach, but Paul would work from here, and I would start working on a new book, because I figured that monsoon rains would start promptly on our arrival so I better have rainy day stuff to do. Oh, Fate must have enjoyed my attempt at backing up plans.

We arrived on March 11^th, and quickly started receiving texts from family and friends at home that the sky was falling….the world was ending…No food! No water! No toilet paper!—man, they really know where to hit me, I am so fond of TP I bring it with me when I travel…hmmm, should we be alarmed? “Nahh,” we say to each other. So Skip To My Lou we go, getting groceries, setting ourselves up in the condo, right on the beach, for the glorious month of our free-trial snow-birding.

This is gonna be GREAT!

First day, we are run over in the elevator by REAL snow-birds getting the hell out of here. I strike up a chat with one who says “Gotta get out before all the spring breakers bring that Corona virus here!” He’s frantically bumping the cart, carrying everything he owns, into the walls and door frames as he pushes it down the hallway. I stopped on the walkway to the beach, thought about what he said and then promptly went out onto the beach and stuck my head right in the proverbial sand.

By now the texts from home are becoming more frantic by nature, and I’m starting to feel a bit anxious. My mother is texting me that my brother is dropping off “ammo” (a word a mother should never use) for her gun, because “we’re all going to martial law!” I immediately picture rioting and pillaging in the streets and my mother crouched behind her sofa loading her gun.   My mom—the woman who can’t open a bag of croutons.

“Think we should go home?” I ask pouring myself some wine.

“Are you feeling nervous?” husband looks concerned.

“No, why do you ask?” picking up the salad bowl of wine with both hands.

By this time, stores at the beach have started to run low on items as well. The panic has finally trickled its way from Atlanta, everywhere, to the quiet shores of Alabama. We hit three stores looking for various items, give up, and end up in a tacky souvenir shop getting a 1970’s airbrush t-shirt made, and putting pirate hats on each other—don’t tell me we don’t know what to do in a crisis! Deny, deny, deny! Look at us! It’s like we don’t even know it’s the end of the world!

I quickly deduce that my culinary talents are about to be fully tested. I laugh at the irony of my fully stocked kitchen at home which I could cook a gourmet meal for 12 people at a moment’s notice but where am I during the zombie apocalypse food shortage? At a rented beach condo with two tangerines, a bag of pistachios and a half a bag of pork rinds, because pork rinds are low carb and I’ve been low carbing it since January1st—New Year’s Resolution, right? Yeah, well that was before Corona scared us all into thinking that every meal might be our last. This is a crisis french onion dip can’t possibly stand up to. I’m eating potato chips dipped in carrot cake now.

Corona is nipping at our heels.  At this point the beaches were still open and some college spring breakers had made it into town. No worries. It’ll be fine. I’m not talking to anyone on the beach—God no! I’m not even looking at them. But it’s there—looming. I’m an Empath, so I can always feel things coming before they actually arrive, and as I sat there that day looking at the drunk kids having the time of their lives on the beach I wanted to tell them to run the other way—away from me. I felt like the witch in Hansel and Gretel—I might as well just shove all these kids into my oven.

The restaurants were still open too so that night, at 4:30 to avoid “people,” we sat outside overlooking a beach full of bikini clad co-ed’s who were sharing drinks, touching, kissing—Oh my God, stop! Have none of you taken Microbiology?! Cooties! The mother in me wanted to stand up and send them all to their rooms, collectively. I felt it then…they were going to close the beaches. The Hudgins curse had now befallen all of Baldwin County Alabama.

Next morning—beaches closed. Uh-huh. Shocker to no one.

It’s funny how you start to bargain mentally, offering yourself consolations when you get disappointed:

“Maybe we can still WALK on the beach but just can’t sit out there?” NO.

“This should be a private part of the beach, I don’t think it will pertain to…” NO.

“Can we still go out early morning and then just come in before…? NO.

“What if we just walk to the edge of the…?” NO.

“OK, well, we still have the pool.” NO.

“Can we even look at the beach?” NO.

It reminded me of a cartoon I saw once showing two guys casually chatting amongst the burning flames of Hell, one looks down at his cup and says “Man, they’ve thought of everything, even the coffee’s cold.”

I had my birthday here. Planned it that way, because how fun would that be right? To get to celebrate your birthday at the beach—that you can’t go on? Or look at? Lucky for me, I have a husband who made sure I still got to celebrate so he took me to the Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge—lured me there with beignets no less. I fell for it thinking it was going to be like a petting zoo.

“Am I going to get licked by a baby deer?” NO

“Get to hold cute cuddly things in my lap?” NO.

With powdered sugar still in the corners of my mouth, I was starting to get the feeling that I had been duped.

Just look at him. He knows I’m about to hate this.

It was hiking through miles of sloped sandy trails, boob sweat, peeing in the woods with no-see-ums biting my ass, and looking over my shoulder for an alligator the whole time. It was basically Missy’s “Alabama birthday boot camp.” Plus every time we met someone on the trail I had to do quick social distancing math in my head, “Is that six feet? Wait…no…move back.” For the record, boob sweat and math do not a Missy birthday make. He also forgot my birthday presents at home in Atlanta, but he did say “Here, I’ll let you have the last tangerine for your special day.” No scurvy for me,  just  like celebrating my birthday in 1887.

So here we are. Beaches closed. Restaurants closed. I’m trapped with a man who doesn’t drink, hardly eats, doesn’t really talk, and has dedicated over half the kitchen counter space to his work computers. I’ve voluntarily sequestered myself to the condo balcony because I can “make noise” out there.

All personal hygiene or lack thereof is in full swing here. I’m on a quest to see how long I can go without washing or styling my hair or wearing make-up. The seagulls don’t seem to mind. I saw a picture of Rita Wilson online yesterday and realized I “looked” far sicker than she does (btw, God Bless Tom and Rita). I’m just sayin,’ I don’t think keeping people six feet away from me is going to be a problem.

A trip to the grocery store channels my inner, Lara Croft Tomb Raider–gear up, scan the perimeter, suspend myself from the ceiling so as not to touch anyone or anything, dodging people who are breathing. I get home and my husband tells me I have a hole in my shorts. “Oh I’m sorry! I didn’t realize it was a garden party, I thought it was a pandemic! I should have worn my NICE shorts to brave the killer virus germs at the store to get your dinner! Silly me! We’re all just trying to survive here man!”

The unpacking of groceries is now followed by a Silkwood hot shower brillo scrubbing.

One of my favorite lines from, Christmas Vacation, we’ve used daily, “I don’t know what to tell you Audrey, it’s the holidays (or a pandemic), we’re all miserable.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking “Poor things, quarantined at the beach, wah-wah…” and I agree. I’m not making light of the fact that our worst quarantine situation here by far outweighs the best quarantine at home . We can still look at the beach (if we don’t get caught)! And that beats watching pandemic TV or walking my mom through loading her gun over the phone…

“Mom. Mom. No. It’s on the bottom. The bottom Mom. No, the other way. No, you can’t turn it off and back on again…Mom. Listen. Ok, let’s start over…”

Everyone please stay safe—wear clean underwear like your mom always told you to, “just in case,” maintain your sense of humor, and we will get through this. We can do it!