Believe
March 12, 2010 | Words
I was about 8 when I went to Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Florida, just after it first opened. I wore knee-high socks with a long-sleeved pink velvet dress. In Florida.
This one.
But, hey, it was my favorite dress and apparently all the rage in amusement-park fashion.
I remember waiting in lines and a “ride” that looked like a giant tree. (If I’d been back since then, I might actually know what some of these things are called.) I remember eating in a real restaurant, one that served shrimp. I remember the haunted-house ride that made it look like the person in the middle seat was a ghost. I was the ghost. I remember going through the It’s a Small World ride more than once at the end of the day.
I left that place with magic dust in my eyes and the desire to believe fairy tales.
Ah, yes. Fairy tales.
I’ve always known certain things in my head about my family, but I made up a fairy tale for my heart. This is a family with an abusive father (my grandfather), who tormented and tortured his children and then all but forgot them when he left them behind. While he was abusive to his own children, he never laid a hand on his grandchildren (as far as I know) or great-grandchildren, but they lived with the effects of his abuse every day.
You see, I knew the truth of the secrets that lurk just below the surface of a six-pack or two — abandonment and abuse of every kind. I knew the truth of addiction — whether it was to alcohol, drugs, food or religion — and the continuing cycle of abuse, whether it was inflicted on others or oneself.
But I wanted to believe my fairy tale. The one that said I was different. I had people who loved me, saw the best in me and wouldn’t intentionally hurt me. Oh, how I wanted to believe that fairy tale. I did for many, many years. Because it was so much prettier than the truth.
The truth is, this is a family with sisters who haven’t seen each other in 20 years.
This is a family where you could say something wrong and be banished for life, without notice, leaving you to wonder just what you did wrong. If you ask, nobody knows. Or, even if they do know, they won’t say.
This is a family where a mother asked at the start of every telephone conversation with one of her daughters, “Are you still fat?”
This is a family with another father (my grandfather’s son) who disowned his own son, reclaimed him and then flipped him a big old bird from his grave, intentionally naming him in his will for the sole purpose of saying, in front of everyone, that his son gets nothing from his father.
I don’t understand intentional cruelty like that (fairy tale), and, yet, I do (head).
Ah, yes. Fairy tales.
I was the only one who believed my fairy tale. It was pretty and sparkly and sprinkled with magic dust. But now it’s time to put the storybook back on the shelf.
…
The princess has been kissed, and she’s awake now. Wide awake. For herself. For her children. For their children.
The Beginning
Posted by Becky @
6:00 am |
Love
March 1, 2010 | Words
Sometimes it takes someone else’s words to express how you feel.
I don’t want to be loved just because I am a sister, a mother, an old friend, or a known quantity. I want to be loved because I’m worthy – because I give it back with an open heart – because whether we are together or at a distance, we both feel drawn to care for, support, and love each other with the best of everything that is within us, knowing that mediocrity is the antithesis of interest.
Love me because I’m worthy. If you believe I am not, then you really shouldn’t love me at all.
Thank you, Jane, at Finding My America for sharing so much with your words.
Posted by Becky @
12:18 pm |
Happy
Magpie Musing makes me think. She also makes me happy. She’s inspired me (again), this time to think about what makes me happy. Here’s a list.
- Books
“Nothing is more human than a book.” ~ Marilynne Robinson, The Paris Review, Issue 186, Fall 2008.
- Laughter
- Hugs your body fits right into
- Lists — making them, crossing them off
- Brilliant summer greens
- Blooming azaleas
- Angel-food cake
- Making a good meal then sitting down to eat it with people I love (and some wine, of course)
- Coffee
- The orange sky that makes my kids say, “Mommy, that’s such a beautiful sunset! I bet you wish you had your camera.” (Yep.)
- Music, music, music ~ How can you listen to any of these songs and not at least smile? Say Hey (I Love You), Michael Franti; Love Serenade, The Waifs; Sweet Potato Pie, James Taylor; How I do math: Una mas cervesa + Billy Bacon & the Forbidden Pigs + the Zoo Bar = One Mighty Tasty Tex-Mex Bluesbilly Taco
Posted by Becky @
6:00 am |
Irony
February 19, 2010 | Words
Irony
Writing to my children in a beautiful Italian-made leather-bound journal
that I bought with a gift certificate
I got several birthdays ago
from someone who told me
just before my last birthday
that I don’t deserve my children.
Just when you think people don’t know you,
they prove they know
your soft spots
all too well
because those are the best places
to hit
when you want to hurt someone.
Take an old gal like me
who suffered through
agonizing years
of infertility.
Call her a bad mother.
Call her a bad wife for good measure.
Then watch her pick up the pieces of her heart
and
walk away.
Posted by Becky @
9:18 am |
Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba, said the monkey to the chimp
December 6, 2008 | Words
Sayings that make me giggle.
“It’s always in the last place you look.”
Well, actually, it’s usually in the second-to-last place I look. Because after I’ve found it? I like to keep looking.
Posted by Becky @
12:07 pm |
Picking nits: Psst! Don’t use ‘fanny’ in a headline!
Unless you want all the folks who speak British English to spit their coffee because, umm, fanny doesn’t mean buttocks to them. It means :::whisper::: female genitalia.
Ahem.
So imagine non-American-English speakers reading this headline on the front page of The Wall Street Journal the other day.
Modest Proposal: A Vermont Town Bucks Nakedness, Skinny-Dipping Spurs An Outbreak of Nudity; The Fanny-Pack Man
A man with a fanny-pack, no less.
Fanny issues might not be discussed much in, oh, The Economist, but they are discussed elsewhere.
But, hey. I bet one of the new bosses (you know, the ones from Australia?) might have an idea why using fanny in any context while trying to be serious might have the Brits laughing their arses off at the daft wanks, er, Yanks, who thought it was a good idea at the time.
Just sayin’.
Posted by Becky @
12:50 am |
Writing From The Heart - Guest Post by Rebecca Laffar-Smith
Wow! It sure is a trip to be connecting with readers across the web in realms I tread with caution. I’m Rebecca Laffar-Smith from over at The Writer’s Round-About and when Becky asked if I’d help out by writing a guest post I thought it was a great idea. She’s off exploring the world and all her readers have an opportunity to hear from so many different voices while she’s away.
You should read the email she left us all with. A lengthy list of topics we could wander into along with free reign to do whatever we wanted instead. Becky, you’re a very brave person. I’m not particularly brave so I’m going to stick with a topic I know well.
Writing From The Heart
You don’t have to be a professional writer to experience the joy and wonder of written expression. Writing often feels like an enforced part of our daily lives. We rarely make time to write for ourselves. Do you keep a journal? Write about your dreams? List your ideas? Or is your writing limited to shopping lists, work reports and financial statements?
Taking up a pen and notebook is a simple way to create inspiration in your life. Write down what you are thankful for or what you’ve accomplished today. Reignite your life by exploring who you really are. By committing your thoughts to paper you create a record you can reflect on in years to come.
One advantage of writing only for yourself is that you don’t have to write well. The most important key to developing writing skills is to dig deep into your heart. We all begin with the basic understanding of sentence structure and composition. Developing the skills of a professional writer is not something those who write for themselves have to do. So long as you can read your own writing you can write in any way you like, about anything you like. Explore the topics that interest you and weave yourself with the language and words that fire your emotions.
You do not have to fear censorship or ridicule. What you write in your personal journal is for your eyes only. There is an amazing freedom when we permit ourselves to commit the significance of our thoughts to paper and the privacy to hold these words close to our hearts.
Explore your mind and emotions. Discover your inner being and the wealth of your subconscious intelligence. All it takes is a few minutes a day to open yourself to new ideas and a form of relaxation that gives your creative voice the freedom to sing its own song.
Write from your heart today and visit The Writer’s Round-About if you’d like to read more about writing.
Posted by Rebecca Laffar-Smith @
2:06 am |
Sometimes I’m just a jerk*
So I read this.
MONTICELLO, IA.– As the sun was rising over the snow covered Iowa farmland, dotted with rolled bales of hay or straw (Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times kindly briefed me on the difference), the bus carrying reporters covering presidential candidate Barack Obama was headed towards Friday’s first campaign stop.
Oh, right. They don’t have hay and straw (or Wikipedia, for that matter) in Chicago. Or, gee, anywhere else in the state. And isn’t it amusing that someone at The New York Times is not from New York City?!? [guffaw, slap knees] Besides, it wouldn’t have the same ring to it to drop Freddy Farmer’s name from the Podunk County Weekly News. Now would it?
*asshole
Posted by Becky @
4:46 pm |
I can’t help it … schwing!
I can’t see this:
Without thinking about this.
Posted by Becky @
2:55 pm |
Picking nits: Using a dictionary
I gave my son his first dictionary today. Will it be my excuse to say, “Look it up,” when he asks how to spell something? Maybe.
But I could say it’s more along the lines of the “teach a man to fish” idea, one that says, “Teach a child to learn how to use a dictionary, and he’ll learn how to spell.” Whenever I asked how to spell a word when I was growing up, my parents said, “There’s the dictionary. Look it up.”
Will my son enjoy nitpicking like I do? Doesn’t matter, really. He’ll probably be good at something I can’t fathom, like physics or poetry. I only hope he learns to love words and to have fun with them. I hope he learns that spellcheck is nice, but it never beats a good ol’ dictionary.
Me? I still use my dictionary almost every day. I love to nitpick – 2. (figuratively) to correct minutiae or find fault in unimportant details; to kvetch – which some might say makes me an OK editor. Is where you place a comma or hyphen an unimportant detail? Depends on how perfect you want your copy. Co-workers used to threaten to make me a T-shirt with “Is anal retentive hyphenated?” on it. That was, ahem, a rhetorical question, but of course I had an answer.
So … I need to pick some nits.
Why do people still call female students co-eds (or coeds), an outdated term from the days they were the exception rather than the rule on college campuses? It’s not technically incorrect; it’s just annoying.
Lots of students have been calling since school officials announced Saturday night that a USF co-ed had meningitis. — “USF Officials Urge Calm After Meningitis Infects Student,” Josh Poltilove, The Tampa Tribune, Sept. 23, 2007
This was partly because his staff had told me to be prepared to discuss the recent arrest of a USC coed for the murder of her newborn infant (the woman’s lawyer had cancelled at the last minute) rather than my book “The Case for Hillary Clinton.” — “Elizabeth And Hillary,” Susan Estrich, Sept. 21, 2007
The Women’s Shelter of East Texas sees victims of all ages, but counselors know from national studies, young coed’s are a likely target. — “Nacogdoches Gang Rape Reported/Rape Prevention,” Donna McCollum, Sept. 20, 2007
P.S. Coeds doesn’t need an apostrophe.
“Fordham coed sues over bedbugs in hotel dorm,” Jose Martinez, New York Daily News, Sept. 21, 2007
“MIT coed with fake bomb ‘art’ arrested,” Glen Johnson, The Associated Press, Sept. 21, 2007
…
More than 1.5 million tourists now visit the arctic each year, up from one million in the early 1990s, according to the U.N. Longer and warmer summers keep arctic seas freer of ice flows, so cruise ships can visit places that were once inaccessible — raising other environmental concerns. — Arctic Becomes Tourism Hot Spot, But Is That Cool? by Gautam Naik, The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 24, 2007
Masses of floating ice are called floes. (I ain’t talking, “Mel, kiss my grits.”)
Kentucky Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher should have been a shoe-in for re-election this year. — “Kentucky Derby.” Jim Waters, The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 20, 2007
An obvious candidate is a shoo-in.
…
Because I’m a nitpicker, maybe that’s why I get a kick out of Regret the Error, which posts ”corrections, retractions, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the media,” and Undercover Black Man’s MPB (Misidentified Black Person) posts. If you like to pick nits, check them out.
Posted by Becky @
10:30 pm |
