Francis Ford Copolla never had to deal with this...

My mother and I cried today... but they weren't tears of pain or frustration. Rather, they were tears of laughter fueled by memories and really bad videography ala my father. It seemed appropriate that during my homecoming we might delve into such memories with the help of some old home movies, so sure enough after I mentioned it in passing yesterday my mother dutifully set up the camera and we sat down today for a serious flashback.

As a result I relived 1987, my first day of Kindergarten, and the day I learned to ride a bike. I also watched my 3-year old sister play tetherball with herself for a solid 15 minutes... clearly this is before my father learned that just because you CAN record moments for posterity, doesn't mean you necessarily SHOULD. It was very Napoleon Dynamite. Perhaps my favorite moment was my father interviewing me after my first day of school. I'm swaying back and forth in our backyard swing and about every 2 minutes my Dad tells me to stop and asks me if I'm trying to drive him crazy, eventually sighing, "Francis Ford Copolla never had to deal with this!" Ahh, childhood.

After the laughfest, my mother mentioned something interesting. She noted how interesting it was to see how enduring some of our personality characteristics were. And she was right, I noticed myself and Liz doing some of the same things as children that we do today. Gives some credence to the nature side of the nature vs. nurture debate. So it was on my mind again tonight as I played "Crazy Aunt Lora" to my best friend Travis and Nicole's daughter, Avery. She'll be two next month and she's developing at the speed of light. I couldn't help but wonder which qualities will endure in her, and how those qualities will present themselves in the person she will be as an adult. She is so much like her parents... like Travis she loves repetition, like Nicole she likes things to be organized and "just right." Having known Travis and Nicole since we ourselves were kids, it's funny to see how these qualities have been enduring in them since childhood too.

That's one of the things I appreciate most about maintaining relationships since childhood. I've blogged about this a lot, but it's truly a special experience to see the progression of people you love over time. It's hard to feel like I'm missing that progression as a result of moving, but that's an essential part of my progression. Avery's been talking about Crazy Aunt Lora for weeks, but the first time she saw me upon my return she started crying... she didn't recognize me, it had been 1/4 of her life since she'd seen me! Thankfully, I'm learning that 6 months of separation isn't that difficult to overcome and the love that characterizes such long-term relationships is its enduring quality.

The Road Home...

It's been 6 months... more than 6 months actually. Time keeps on ticking, I keep on learning, and I keep on seeking out new experiences. One of those experiences is returning home for the first time since "truly" moving away. I haven't lived at home since high school, but I've always lived within a hour's drive of the home I grew up in, the friends I learned multiplication and sharing with, and the places that are burned into my brain since birth. On the one hand, I can't believe it's taken me this long to have this experience, but on the other hand I realize that some people die having never lived more than a stone's throw from their birthplace.

The concept of seeing old things with new eyes is one that I've been thinking about since a dear friend mentioned it in an e-mail last week. I feel like I'm returning to all that I know, but frankly, I don't know what it will be like. My eyes are indeed "new" and my perspective has changed... I'm still wholeheartedly myself, but with 6 months greater perspective. In that period I've moved to a different state (let's be honest, Texas is kind of a different country), built a support system from the ground up, started an intense doctoral program, started an intense new job, coordinated a clinical research lab, had a car accident, broken a bone (haha, okay it's my toe, but it counts!), had a family health scare, and made it out in one piece! Now that's some perspective. We'll see how it translates to good ol' Colorado... which is still, very much, my home.

I ask my group to do "final thoughts" a lot at the end of our group: a thought that reflects on the day so far and the day ahead. It's funny, I end up seeing the "doorknob effect" a lot. Clinically, it's the phenomenon of a client coming to see you for therapy for an hour but not speaking the real problem or feeling until the moment they're opening the door to leave. So my final thought is:

There's no place like home.

Love,

Laura.

Sunday Conversations

Some relationships are best described by a glimpse into their exchanges... I'm completely guilty of keeping e-mails, cards, text messages, voicemails, and verbatim memories of conversations stored away as a reminder of the people that make hanging out on this planet worth it. I joke with Travis about some of the voicemails of his that I've saved for months because every 30 days when the nice automated voice at Verizon reminds me that I should erase my saved messages, I get to enjoy the ridiculousness of his 2 minute rambling messages and laugh about them all over again.

Maybe I'm just sentimental, or silly, or incapable of letting go... but in lieu of writing a rambling blog entry myself, I'll let some of the people in my life speak for me.

So, here's a glimpse into a single day of relationships... a select sampling of today in dialogue:

Jack: "Do you like banana pancakes?"
Me: "Umm, basically I don't like anyone who would answer 'No' to that question. It's pretty much my yardstick for a quality person."
Jack: "Hi, nice to meet you, do you like banana pancakes? No, you say?"
Me: "Yeah, you don't know this but we're not going to get along."
Jack: "I see, by the way I just bought a griddle. When are you coming over for banana pancakes?"
Me: "As soon as possible."

_________________________

this is a super official email. you know because it smacks of official-ness.

bunchy which pictures do you still owe me? i think there are some but i am not sure.

ps. bring your camera today.
pps. i think jigs is coming, i hope, and that would be fun.
ppps. i am kinda dressed like an art teacher again today.
pppps. when can we have an italian-movie fest?
pppps. what are you doing tonight?
ppppps. the last two ps's had the same number of p's.
pppppps. all my ps's have proper grammar. be proud. <3
ppppppppppppppps. i can't wait to go to homestead, it's gonna be fairly rockin. okay fine, really rockin.

i hope you get this before we go.

punchy.

_________________________

Just a quick holiday party follow-up. Please vote for the following.
1) For the 3-tiered beverage fountain, I would like my beverage to be:
a. margaritas
b. straight whiskey
c. grape fanta
d. other: ______

2) As part of the party reveling, I would like to experience:
a. the world's worst R&B "comcast on-demand karaoke" on Jane's tv
b. Trivial Pursuit: The Longmont Edition
c. having an artist paint our group portrait in lieu of digital photos
d. other: _____

3) I plan to attend said holiday party on Saturday the 20th:
a. without a doubt
b. had the wrong date in mind but now I'm sorted out
c. with a faux English accent, like Madonna

happy weekending,
Jane the Very Exhausted
ps- Tom and I just had Vietnamese food, and my fortune was "you will encounter fortunate circumstances at different times in the future". Voting preference will be given to those who tell me a fortune that's even remotely better than this one.

_________________________

Me: "I should call my Mom and make sure I can use her car that day so I can meet you guys for lunch."
Fitzi: "Ha, don't you feel like you're 16 again... you have to ask to borrow the car."
Me: "I know!"

_________________________

me: No, I don't think thats measured in the discrepancies (according to the book)... but maybe you're right and we should just use the simple difference method. Let's just do the best we can and have Sara rip it apart tomorrow.

Shehzad: okie doke

I don't care too much anymore hahasee ya in the morn for the best freeman center day ever

plus dinner

me: now THAT's what I'm talking about!! :)

Shehzad: course I'll probably ask you something before then

me: haha, I know... likewise.

Shehzad: cool :) bye for now then

me: ciao for now (hey, that rhymes)

_________________________

Of all our family other than me, you're the only one that really has the capacity to write, that is, to communicate in an archaic form of communication begun with the Semites on the deserts of the Middle East 5,000 years ago, and which ended with the cell phone and Blackberry in our own times. Being able to write to you is like being able to communicate with someone in Latin, another now dead language.

You should not lose your ability to express yourself with the written word. We're one of the least permanent societies that ever existed on the earth. This email message will never be printed and will be lost to time in a year at best. If you download it to a CD, the CD will be unreadable in 10 years. If you print it, it may last 100, but by then, nobody will be able to read anyway because they've also lost the ability to write. If it were carved in stone, as were the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians, people could still read it 4,000 years later. How odd it is. The Incas were an entirely oral society, as were their predecesors, the Wari and Huani and the other societies of Sourth America in pre-Conquest times. Nothing is known of them. The ONLY reason we know anything of the Inca, who would now be extinct anyway as a result of the natural process of time, is that the Spanish "Conquistadores" sent clerics, accountants and historians to document who they were, who were their gods and leaders, so they could justify the Conquest and forced Christianization, a form of cultural and actual genocide. How ironic it is, therefore, that those very destructors preserved them for all time. We only know of the Incas because they were the regime in power (to be conquered) at the time of the Conquest. Without the Conquest, they would be as unknown as the others. I could carry this absurd monologue to its logical limits, however I will abandon that to speak of things more current and interesting.

... Love, Dad

_________________________

Where do these people come from and how did I get so lucky to have them in my life? I love my peeps... those represented here and those I didn't happen to converse with today. There's always tomorrow!

It Really is Wednesday Again.

I kind of fell off the blogging wagon since moving to Texas, but after six months in my little corner of crazy I feel compelled to reflect a bit on the experience before it comes full circle with my return home in a week.

So, it's Wednesday again. Wednesdays are my rough days... they usually begin at 9am with me leading a hodge podge of substance abusing women in group therapy. To be honest, sometimes it's them that lead me, but that's the process. Throw in a couple of individual therapy sessions at the men's house, some B.S.ing with Shehzad over lunch, five hours of neuropsych testing, and I find myself collapsing on the couch at 11pm. Even though I'm exhausted, I end the day knowing I did something. That's really important to me... to know that my efforts at the end of the day served a purpose greater than just my own enjoyment. And strangely, I gain a sense of enjoyment from knowing I met that goal. Selfish selflessness at its finest, I suppose.

27 growing women
+ 2 hours
+ 6 criers
+ 3 apologies
+ 2 hugs
+ a sleeping pregnant woman
+ a touch of psychosis
+ a slew of denial
+ "Miss Laura"
________________
My Wednesday Morning

Something changed over the last few weeks. I stopped feeling like a stranger in a strange land. I started feeling confident, truly capable, in the work that I'm doing. I won't lie, it feels fantastic despite the exhaustion. I don't think I've ever been this unrelentingly active in my entire life, and frankly I had a twinge of regret for some of the opportunities I've missed by sitting back in life. I've changed a lot, not just in the past six months, but in the past few years. I feel like I'm closer to the person I wanted to be as a little girl imagining her life in the future, though none of the realities of my life are close to those long ago visions.

At this age I pictured myself married, living in a quaint and beautiful town, working in a professional job, thinking about children, spending time with funny and caring friends, buying a house... basically I pictured myself as a "cooler" version of my own mother. The reality is that I'm not married much less anywhere near motherhood, I'm living in Waco (heart of Bible-belt) Texas, I'm a student who shuffles between other peoples' offices to see clients who would have scared me as a child, I'm living alone in an apartment, and I'm spending time with funny and caring friends. All in all, it's nothing like my vision of who I wanted to be. Inside my head, when I allow myself to see it, it's even better than my vision of who I wanted to be. That "perfect" life I'd envisioned is so BORING! That life wouldn't have been challenging or forced me to learn... it might have been nice but it's so expected... and I expect more of myself than that.

So next week I'll be back in Colorado and likely conflicted about my role as a visitor at home. What a strange concept, to be a visitor in your own home. What a strange concept to believe that home lies in any particular place, or time, or people. Tomorrow is Shefrischmakwanzaka... the holiday celebration of my Waco family in my Waco home. I could explain the name, but it would require more backstory than I have the energy for right now. Suffice it to say, home is one of those concepts I've thought a lot about lately and to steal the sentiment of Maya Angelou,

"I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself."

Dammit, I started writing too late... now it's Thursday again. :)

These people say, "Thumbs up for Wednesdays!"