my mom is one of those delightful people who dispenses a lot of advice. and i mean, a lot of advice. she has spent the last twenty three years advising me. and while i wish i could say that i listen to all of her wisdom…i don’t. like most willful, sassy children i tend to let it go in one ear and out the other. until later on when it bites me in the ass and i think…i should have listened to mom.
there are many mom-isms that i’ve only recently come to understand, even though they are all advice that has been offered to me over and over again. these include (but are certainly not limited to):
1. if everyone else says it is a bad decision, it probably is. if everyone else says you are wrong, you probably are.
2. everyone deserves to love and be loved.
3. the people who are worth it fall in love with you because of the journey you are on. not because of the destination.
i often call my mom for advice. i also often call her when i am bored, sick, irritated, happy, excited, nervous, anxious…well, you get the picture. the woman has been subject to my every mood swing and tear since birth and as a result, knows exactly how to deal with me. so when i called her last night, after a weekend of moping where my internal dialogue went something like this–
i’m so bored. why aren’t r. and d. home. i miss my family. i want to move home. i’m sick of washington d.c. i’m never going to get a job. i’m irritated with my housemates. i want to travel. everyone else is getting married. everyone else is having babies. i’m fat. i’m ugly. i’m bored. my life is so uninteresting.
–i was expecting sympathy. no such luck. she was in the middle of finishing her final paper for her multicultural health class (because on top of the full time job of being my mother and managing an entire emergency room…she is getting her master’s degree) and after patiently listening for a few minutes she offered a new kind of advice. in the form of the following, simple question:
where is your spunk?
where is my spunk? what a pointless question. i’m tired, i’m crabby and for heaven’s sake I DON’T KNOW where it is. boy, was i irritated. i hung up the phone irritated. i went to bed irritated and thrashed around for awhile like a two year old. and i woke up this morning still annoyed. then, in an effort to make myself feel better, i went on dictionary.com and looked up the word spunk, because for some reason etymology tends to have a pacifying effect on my moods. here is what i came up with:
hmm. i cross referenced (good english major that i am) and came up with the following definitions for pluck:
1. to pull suddenly.
2. courage or resolution in the face of difficulties.
and then (finally beginning to feel a bit better), i cross referenced mettle:
1. courage and fortitude.
2. in the position of being incited to do one’s best
use it in a sentence, please?
the loss of the first round put him on his mettle to win the match.
okay. so maybe mom was right. although i’m anxious to be done with lvc…to move forward with my life…i need to face where i am right now with a bit more excitement. with a bit more spunk. i need to be on my mettle to come out of this year with a sense of achievement. a better sense of self. an unshakable belief that i have grown this year.
and in the name of personal growth, here are the areas of my life i’ve identified as needing to approach with a bit more pluck:
1. my commitment to exercise, eating right and personal health.
2. the eternal, awful search for employment.
3. my community.
4. healing my heart and forgiving myself.
5. enjoying my life in washington d.c.
so, in the name of pluck (and because mom is usually right), here it goes. i have seven weeks left and i am going to enjoy them and keep moving forward. because the truth of the matter is, when it is freezing cold in minneapolis next november, i am going to be pissed at myself if i don’t take advantage of the time i had to be myself, here.
every week or so i get a copy of “the classical post,”minnesota public radio’s e-newsletter. it helps me feel connected to the music scene at home and usually has an interesting human interest story or two. this week’s newsletter featured a blurb about soprano deborah voight, who was featured last year on 60 minutes because she had gastric bypass surgery.
this, in and of itself, is perhaps not particularly interesting…but what is interesting is that ms. voight was fired two years ago from her title role in ariadne auf naxos because the costumer at the royal opera house in covent garden wanted her to wear a “little black dress” in a new, contemporary adaptation of the opera. it was determined that she was simply too overweight to wear the gown and so her contract was terminated. voight’s firing, and the flurry of media surrounding it, subsequently became known as the “little black dress incident.”
voight (who eventually lost 135 pounds), says in the interview with 60 minutes that she didn’t have surgery because of the royal opera house…but because of her health. she was a size 28-30 and was experiencing weakened joints and back pain…and because even climbing stairs was difficult. she also notes in the article that there was some concern over how her voice would fair when she had the surgery. would she still be able to sing without the weight? what if something went wrong in surgery? could she lose her extraordinary gift?
i (personally) am having a really hard time sorting through my emotions on this one. and although i rarely ask my readers to comment (mostly because of a serious fear that they won’t)…i’m curious as to what you all think. should she have had gastric bypass? risked her incredible talent? should opera singers be “allowed” to be overweight in a society that is forever judging everyone else?
this topic is tense. many of us struggle with weight and personal appearance issues (myself included). but i’m not an opera star. so i’m held up to the same, albeit unrealistic, standards as everyone else. but that doesn’t mean i try to get out of them any chance i can get. i can’t tell you how many times a day i tell myself it is “okay” that i’m not beautiful because i’m intelligent. because i’m well read. because i’m funny. because i have so much more going for me than my looks. is that why we sometimes let opera singers off the hook, too? as a women, if you are talented enough, does there come a point when people don’t expect you to be pretty and thin anymore? or are we always held up to those standards?
its the classic smart vs. pretty myth. and all too often society tells us we can’t be both. i’m not proud to say that i participate in this myth on a regular basis. whenever i have a meeting on capitol hill i give scathing glances to what i frequently refer to as the “clackety clacks” or the “skinterns.” the beautiful, well dressed, perfectly groomed women that seem to thrive in abundance anywhere along independence and constitution avenues.
i tell myself that it is okay that i’m not perfectly tanned or that my highlights have grown out…that most people would call me chubby…because I work on human rights. or because I am a feminist. or because I am a liberal. all excuses which could basically be boiled down to “no one expects me to be pretty and thin because i’m smart and empowered instead.” but what happens to the women who are pretty and smart? are they a double threat? or are they simply not taken seriously? and furthermore, what if i started viewing myself as genuinely beautiful in the same way i view myself as genuinely intelligent? then what? would i explode? would i spontaneously combust with the contradiction of it all?
i’m afraid i don’t have an answer to that. self love is a journey i’m still on. so is good health. some days the litany of excuses wins out–“yes, you can have that second piece of pie because you are going to end up with someone who loves you because you read books about the history of the english language for fun, not because you are a size four”–and some days it doesn’t. on those days my self dialogue is a little more like this–”not eating a second piece of pie isn’t going to get you to a size four (only a complete genetic overhaul would do that), but it is putting you on the road to better health. eventually.”
in the end, my hope for myself is that i’ll someday strike a balance between the mental, physical and spiritual aspects of my life. that is why i practice yoga. that is why i pray. that is why i drink eight glasses of water a day even if i end up eating three snickers bars too. i’m on a journey. and what i’m starting to understand is that i have to be patient with myself when there are detours. or when i don’t end up where i expected. and, in the end, i have to be able to laugh at myself. something deborah voight does beautifully in this skit about her return to covent garden:
happy thursday. i wish you all the best on your own journey toward self acceptance.
i really like kathleen norris. “dakota: a spiritual geography” is one of those books i wish i had written. that i think i could have written, if i had significantly better writing skills and a bit more introspection. in “dakota” kathleen norris writes of her family’s homestead: “(it is) my spiritual geography, the place where i’ve wrestled my story out of the circumstances of landscape and inheritance”.
my dad and i were talking about kathleen norris when i was home this weekend. we were also talking about our spiritual geography. my spiritual geography. about the fact that (on his side) i am a sixth generation resident of the prairies of southern minnesota. i know that in our increasingly mobile world, this is more and more rare. very few people have that kind of tie to a specific location. we have to create our own geography.
its like those advertisements for the phone company that combine the names of major cities to explain to you the places that call most often. for me its owaolaftwincitiesmetro. next year it will be washiolaftonna. or maybe twinonnawash. depending.
i guess the point of all of this is that the older i get, the more i realize that home isn’t really home anymore. at least not how i originally envisioned it. like so many other things in my life, it is never going to be again what it once was. your geography changes. and even the places you think haven’t changed, actually have. because they now mean something completely different. so while blast softserve is still on the corner of rose and north oak, and still serves my favorite cookie dough ice cream treats, i saw it with new eyes when my brother and i went there last week. same teal shutters and walk up window. different heart.
i was attempting to explain all of this to my best friend a. over dinner in northfield on friday evening and how much it used to bother me. how i used to look at the ice cream shop, owatonna high school and the steele county free fairgrounds and wish i could go back. that i could do it all over again and somehow fix things. prevent a broken heart. walk away sooner. live my life without being afraid of losing him. i used to look at these places, see these places, and only feel hurt and betrayal. the only thing i took away from home was how much i had missed. how much time i had wasted. the same with st. olaf. frankly, i decided to move to washington d.c. because i was terrified of missing my own life. which is what being at home used to make me feel like.
but as i told a., this trip was different. my lame-ass analogy went something like this: do you know how your foot feels when its asleep? numb, but when you try to move forward at all by putting pressure on it, it hurts like hell? that is what my life felt like, my whole body. i felt trapped by this searing pain every time i tried to move forward. because everywhere i looked i saw who i was. and i thought that was who i was supposed to be. but this time visiting home was different.
for the first time it felt like mine again. my own home. not the home of something and someone i’d rather forget. and while i don’t believe in signs, when i was driving up to st. olaf to visit some old friends, i heard the song. you know the one. that song we’ve all claimed as our own that resurrects the skeletons in the closet and makes a scarred wound feel like its bleeding again. mine happened to come on 89.3 the current just as i was pulling onto i-35. and i listened to it. for the first time. in two years. from start to finish. and there were no tears and no hurt. memories, certainly. like the time i recorded myself singing it on his cell phone. but as i remembered that it felt so distant from my life right now. more like a movie that i had watched once than a person i had ever been.
a couple months ago, when i was being super angst-y about staying in d.c. or moving home to minnesota, my brother (wise beyond his years at eighteen) said roughly the following to me: “i know that it took a lot of courage for you to move to washington d.c. and i know why you did it. but you’ve done what you went out there to do. don’t you think the really courageous thing to do now would be to move home and start the new life you’ve created here, where you belong, with your family?”
yes, russ. i suppose you’re right. and as much as moving to washington d.c. has complicated my personal geography, it has somehow managed to simplify it as well. home is home. d.c. is d.c. and i am myself in both places. finally.
…may just be my new favorite place. i was walking over to meet r. and d. yesterday before our fabulous dinner event (at which i drank far too much champagne) and outside the 7-11 on 13th and irving a man looked at me and said: “do you know how pretty you are!?”
new favorite person. new favorite convenience store. but what i should admit is that i did, in fact, give him a face like “are you kidding me right now?” my immediate response because it was (a) pouring rain and (b) the end of a very long day at work. and although i have heretofore hesitated to put any concrete definition on what a “katie girl” actually is…one thing i decided last night is that katie girls own the compliments people give them.
so i promise, next time a random street man tells me that i’m pretty, i’m going to respond with a simple “thank you.”
