Happy New Year

Crammed up against Christmas and unfortunately mired in the coldest, darkest time of the year, I've never been able to reconcile January 1st as a holiday, much less the start of a New Year.  It’s cold, bleak, and unwelcoming, not a stellar time to be thinking about a new exercise regime, changes to bad habits, or really anything other than hibernating.  That’s why I’ve always taken heart in the natural way my year seems to transition at the end of June into the beginning of July.

The start of my New Year celebration begins with the Summer Solstice.  The pagan in me finds this day enchanted.  The longest day of the year, lush and green, smelling of fresh cut hay and ripe strawberries, such a contrast to the stark landscape of January.  It’s the perfect day to be outside from dawn until dusk doing something that is good for your soul. This year the Strawberry Moon was coming full and I watched it rise over the Oahe Dam in the middle of the South Dakota grasslands as the sky radiated magenta beneath the thunderheads.  You can see to forever there, which is a beautiful thing when you are considering all of the possibilities life has to offer.  

The next leg of my new year happens on my birthday, almost a week later, on June 27. I consider birthdays each person’s personal New Year.  This year my transitioning held the additional boon of my son’s first birthday on June 25.  Starting with the Irish blessing of a buttered nose for luck (don’t ask, I don’t know where it came from), you get to take stock of everything the year before has been for you and use your special birthday wish (yes, these do come true, you know) to give a bit of magic and weight to your heart’s desires for the next one.  

My 35th year was far and away the most challenging of my life.  I got my birthday wish from my 34th year- a baby!  Sterling was ardently longed for, and perhaps it was that birthday candle dream that made him a reality. I spent all of 34 trying to get pregnant and then being pregnant.  That year passed in a quiet hum, flushed and pink with anticipation, dreams, and extra baby blood.  On my 35th birthday, I brought my son home from the hospital, sore and exhausted but proud and in awe of this new life.  I have no idea what my birthday wish was as I sat at the table with him beside me, snuggled in and sleeping away his newness. I had everything, so perhaps I wished for nothing at all.

The next day I had to bring Sterling back to the hospital. He was jaundice and tongue tied, not able to nurse.  I was battered and bruised and my milk wouldn’t come in, but I was so swollen that I winced at a touch.  I got a phone call while I was at the hospital that only I had the data needed for some report for school, needed ASAP, so I sat on my hospital bed and cried as I tried to pump and type.  And so the challenges of being a new, working mother began.   How would I balance trying to be exceptional at both my job and being a mother, because I was willing to accept nothing less of myself. I was back to work by August, taking really less than five true, full weeks of leave.  I did my best to give 100% of myself to my work and to Sterling (I know the math on that doesn’t work out) while not forgetting my husband, my family, and the other people and responsibilities around me.  I had to remember to pay the bills and feed the cats and horses and smile appropriately when people asked if they could talk to me about their problems.  I had to be level headed and fair even when I had had no sleep or was an hour overdue to pump.

And then I noticed things around me starting to change.  My husband was never home, and when he was home in body, he wasn’t present.  He refused to touch me and rarely talked to me.  He blamed me, saying that I was off-putting, that I was too stressed to be enjoyable.  Did he not see that I was stressed because I was trying to work to make sure we could survive and pay our bills?  That I was working so he could live his dream of running a music shop when really all I wanted was to be able to stay home and be a mom?  Did he not see that I was stressed because I was doing the lion’s share of taking care of our child because he was never there?  In reality, he was using this rationale as an excuse to be having an affair with his 24 year old shop girl.  It was easy to villainize me when his own conscience was so tainted.

I spent the entire fall in denial, praying that he wouldn’t do something like that with a brand new baby at home.  It felt like winter came very early.  In the darkest hours of the coldest days, right after the REAL new year, we confronted reality.  How appropriate a setting for my life to fall apart.  I spent the early months of 2013 watching as the dreams I had for my life and my family sluiced away like sheets of freezing rain.  Friends I needed turned a deaf ear. I fretted away every calorie I was able to take in, causing people to wonder if I was sick or had an eating disorder as I dipped below 110 pounds.  I doubted everything about myself. I had made no New Year’s resolutions, but this was decidedly NOT what I had predicted for 2013.  

As winter slowly began to melt away, I resigned myself to the fact that my marriage was truly, irrevocably over.  But spring is a time of new beginnings, much more so than January.  Once I was able to share what was happening in my world, the people in my inner circle showed me an enormous amount of care and support.  They reached out and tried to take care of me, even though I am terrible at letting that happen.   An old friend became a new source of happiness, reminding me that I have worth, that I am desirable, that I am lovable.  And that was terrifying.  I was encouraged to apply for a job that I considered well beyond my reach, but to my surprise, I was a finalist.  I was content with not getting the position, until my world tilted again and I waited, my breath and future uncertain, to see what would come of my mentor and friend vacating the top spot at Profile. Spring became a time of flux and wondering.  While great things were afoot, I was unmoored and uncertain about everything.  

In the final days of the school year, in the final days of spring, the final days of my 35th year, I began to think that life as I had hoped wasn’t over, and even more to the point, that it could be better than I had ever wished, birthday candle or no.  Hope springs eternal.  I was appointed to Profile’s corner office, which meant the loss of a dear friend from the roll, but an amazing opportunity for me.  My task is ahead of me, and I know what to do. I spent the Solstice in South Dakota, the place where my soul feels most at peace, in the comfort and belonging of a very special person.  My questions about myself and our potential relationship were answered.  Which brings me to now, past the change of seasons, past my birthday, into July.  

When you are in education, July 1 marks the New Year.  The books have been closed on the previous quarter and year, honor rolls are posted, and the time comes to start thinking about September (or late August for us).  For me, this year that means a new job with new responsibilities.  It means proving myself.  But is also means opportunity abounds.  July 1 also marked the start of a new challenge for myself, running (well, sort of), which is so far out of my comfort zone as to be laughable.  But you know, it feels great, especially in the company of an amazing cheerleader and coach.  It is my effort to open up, take risks, and not shy away from things that I can’t automatically do well.  It also means letting someone new(ish) in to my life in a non-work related way, which, believe it or not, hasn’t happened in years.  I have to let go believe that I can be valued as a friend, not just as a leader or problem solver.  

So here I sit on July 4th, Independence Day, the final stretch of my New Year celebration.  My beautiful, amazing son is sleeping through the raucous bangs and crashes of the fireworks all around us.  My legs remind me of the effort I have put in and itch for more. As dusk settles over the grasslands of South Dakota, two hours after ours, I will get a good night phone call from my cowboy, wishing me sweet dreams for the night and my future.  I look forward to Monday when I return to school refreshed after the long weekend, ready to get down to the task of making Profile even more amazing than it already is. And I realize how beautiful it is to be excited about life, love, friendships, work.  I am independent, strong, and capable of not only doing hard work, but of being valued and loved.  What a great way to start the New Year.  Cheers and blessings to all.  

Fireworks over Pierre/Fort Pierre, South Dakota

Country Confession

I have to come clean.  I’ve been keeping this a secret for a long time now, and in order to be true to myself, you know, all that “walk the walk, talk the talk” stuff I’ve been preaching forever, I have a confession: I think I like country music.  Maybe more than a little.  It kinda gives me this warm feeling inside that I haven’t felt before.  OK, I am active country music listener.  

I know some of you have been wondering for a while.  I mean, there have been some hints and clues, right?  Maybe it was my predilection for boots and jeans, or that I ride horses and can drive a tractor, or perhaps the not so subtle big-ass Dodge 1500 Big Horn truck? Or have you been digging a little deeper and recognized the South Dakota grasslands in my Facebook cover photo, or read the longing in my poetry, or saw my blush when they kid behind the register called me ma’am with just a hint of a drawl?  Or did I out myself when I forget to change the radio from WPKQ back to NHPR?  Whatever...now it’s out there and I can’t take it back.  

I first got the inkling that I might be a country music listener three years ago.  I came to it late in life, you see.  When most people are first starting to experiment with music,  I was completely shut off from it.  Even though I was surrounded by country music growing up,  I can hear my mother saying, “Not in this family you don’t.”   You see, it’s not that country music isn’t accepted where I’m from; it’s just that my people don’t accept it.  The country station, which happens to be the one that always comes in, was completely bypassed with a quick scan through.   Instead I was given a healthy diet of Vietnam protest songs and Motown with a smattering of Blues and Soul, coupled with my own generation’s moody cynicism packaged haphazardly in Seattle Grunge and European techno.  It was all about the irony, the disaffected malaise and angst of many young people with purple hair and extensive black wardrobes.  Country was just so, well, country.  

But how could I hide that I was a country girl!  My dad was educated but blue collar and my mom stayed home. My best days were spent playing in the barn, and my best friend was my horse.  Any weekend from Memorial Day to Columbus Day could find us at a horse show, where the experience really wasn’t complete until one of us got dumped into the manure pile.   We had dogs and trucks and we all knew how to muck stalls, throw hay, and use power tools.  But man, don’t let any of my friends at school know all that.  All of those kids who rode on the circuit or I sat with in the bleachers at the Fair- a nod in the hall will do, thanks.  They understood: vo-ag kids don’t talk to the weirdo theatre chicks.  And they certainly don’t share music.  

So there I stayed in the closet until a fateful day in June of 2010 when I drove from Denver to Rapid City and the only stations to come in in my rental car were country.  And for some reason, as I crossed state and county lines, the Muses felt I needed to hear “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” about ten times. After nearly choking on my expensive iced coffee the first time, then really listening and laughing every time thereafter, I started to hum along.  Just a dip of the musical toe, you see.  

But then I arrived at my destination, just west of Pierre, SD. Country music heartland.  And these people didn't just listen to country, you see, they lived it.  Land stretched forever under skies ripe for fireflies and thunderstorms, casting a golden glow over round bales and countless head of cattle.  Pickups abounded, farm trucks and dualies, big jacked up toys. I swear, there is not one foreign car in the whole damned state.  It’s like they are illegal.  You have never heard a country song about a Prius, but at least twenty-five percent feature as a central character a pickup, tractor, or combine.  And the people...”Yes, ma’am” is not sass talk.  It’s real.  They are truly being polite.  Even the little boys in their boots and cowboy hats. Women may be expected to help castrate bull calves and feed twenty sweaty ranchers, but they are still treated like ladies.  And hats get tipped, or at least a finger to the brim and a nod.  They have high school rodeo teams with national champions and everyone stands for The Pledge and sings along to the National Anthem.   They go to church on Sundays and real men believe in the power of Jesus and their mamas.  Just like in the songs.  It would be like going to Seattle and realizing everyone does wear flannel all the time and they really are pissed off and disaffected, and totally like, whatever, dude about everything.  This was a much kinder, gentler reality.  

So I started out experimenting.  You know, a little here, a little there.  Maybe only in NPR wasn't coming in.  But then I found myself actively seeking out the stations, yearning for twangy guitars and songs about country kids on the farm, girls who like boys in trucks, boys who like tractors.  This liberal agnostic found herself singing along to songs about trusting God and letting Jesus take the wheel. And once that sweet boy from South Dakota, the one with the truck and the dog and the ranch and the tractor, started sending me song lyrics, I knew I was done for good. I found songs that fit my life and my longings and melodies that stuck like honey. Eastern grunge techno cynic be damned.  Yes, ladies do like country boys, just like the song says.

"The Blowup," by Tim Cox.
A reminder to save a horse, ride a cowboy.

It was hard to break my newfound love to my family.  I did so gently, easing them in with crossover music, and reminding them that they had voted for Carrie Underwood on Idol.  I was met with raised eyebrows and smirky smiles.  Really?  Country? Are you sure?! Don’t get me wrong, they are getting better, but it’s still going to take time. My dad will now sit in the same vehicle where it is playing, and my younger brother is kind of bi-musical (Bluegrass being the happy medium); my mother, however, it still a bit of music bigot. “It’s ok if country music stars are on reality television, but please don’t let me have to listen to them sing.”  Although she does like Luke Bryan’s butt (who doesn’t?).