Image by Denis Collette...!!! via Flickr
Subtitle: “Born to Blog Under a Pseudonym” or “My Path to Now”
I was born to blog. Some might say I have been blogging since long before “Al Gore Invented the Internet.” Harriet the Spy was my childhood heroine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_the_Spy Yes, I was the one in the hoody, hunched over the notebook chronicling the late 1960s and the 1970s in Upstate New York and Ontario. My family rolled eyes, cringed and made paranoid comments in stage whispers. The compulsion continued and I have innumerable volumes tucked away in locked trunks and sealed envelopes on my property in An Unnamed West Coast City. One of my sisters and one of my best friends are under strict orders to destroy them when the earthly me disappears. Most of the volumes are too tender for me to revisit. And I have warned everyone who might be implicated in them, journals entries are moments in time. Those moments weren’t intended for you and I can’t help you if you take them forcibly from the pages. My husband of 21 years read one of those journals once. 25 years ago. I married him anyway, but the moments in time he took away from them still rear their ugly heads occasionally – so many life chapters later.
But that is a soft launch to what this blog might be about. I am a mother. Oh yes, I am a licensed professional too. A wife, daughter, friend, sister, citizen of the planet, neighbor, school volunteer, yogi, runner, short order cook, reader, board member, credible downhill skiier, left wing liberal, and investor too. I am over-opinionated, sometimes razor-tongued, maintain friendships and business relationships “forever” and have a high tolerance for the chaos and hilarity of raising children and my past. For a long time, I think many would have looked at this snapshot and said, “Lucky.” Lately , however, I learned that my eldest (18) (1) has regularly used drugs of varying strengths since he was 13; and (2) stolen from us to support the habit; and (3) dropped out of h.s. We then (4) put him in rehab on an emergency basis; (5) got a call telling us he had been kicked out of rehab ; and then (6) had to pick him up also on an emergency basis. Then I (7) returned to work 4 days later after holding him prisoner for as long as I could at our cabin, only to (7) receive a call that my 74 year old not-ill mother had died peacefully in her sleep. From there I (8) raced East with junkie in tow, rest of family following; and (9) celebrated, eulogized and cremated my mother (not necessarily in that order). Only to get, by week’s end, to (10) having junkie son relapse on deceased mother’s alcohol. (11) Attended a dizzying number of AA meetings with son who seemed to have at least drunken the AA Kool Aid before he was kicked out of rehab; and (12) got him re-enrolled in a program that would allow him to finish h.s. almost timely – for a price. Somewhere along the way he decided; (13) “Sobriety is not for me at this time of my life,” and (14) Neither is family life, at least not this family’s life. So he (15) moved out to the streets, he says, until he (16) found an apartment with a girl who apparently has no last name or job ; and (17) discovered food stamps. But he did (18) graduate from h.s. And all this before the summer solstice!
mom de guerre 