If I were 50...

I think I’ve been unknowingly, unwittingly been holding out hope for something that may be unattainable for me. Today, while walking across Creighton campus and reflecting on my time here, I realized that I’ve had this delusion: the belief that someday, transitions will be easier for me. I’ve always expected that I would get better at change with age and experience. Kind of like how you get better at cooking, or music, or procrastinating, or wiping your ass, or most anything that you do a lot. 

I have had this absurd image of myself as a 50-something, placidly moving from one life experience to the next, graciously accepting of the ebb and flow of life. It’s all very Zen. (In the image I also have salt-and-pepper hair and am wearing some kind of flowy skirt. I might be high.) It’s as if somehow I magically become a completely different person with a drastically altered personality over the next 20 years.

Let’s take this apart, though, shall we? Has anyone ever, ever, described me as “placid?” Have I ever worn a flowy skirt? Would I ever consider allowing gray hairs to show when I’m in my 50s? And, perhaps most importantly, have I ever moved on easily? No, no, probably not, and no.

The purpose that this fantasy serves is the wish for a pain-free existence. I hate the way it feels when I have to say goodbye. I get angry with myself for letting myself hurt, for not protecting myself better. Yet, when I take a step back from the self-criticism, I remember that pain is just part of life. It’s normal, everyone feels it. And in my heart of hearts, I know that if I stop feeling hurt and sadness that something has fundamentally gone very wrong within me. I have detached. I have given up.  

Today I realized that I need to let go of this future fantasy me and just accept myself for who I am: a person who becomes emotionally involved in what she does. That means that when I start something, I’m all in. I soak into the pores of the project; I fill all of the cracks and crevices with love and energy.  The rewards are numerous: I’m enthusiastic, I’m motivated. I have fun. People can tell that I care. The nasty underbelly of it all is that when whatever it is that I’m doing comes to an end, I feel a bit bereft. It’s hard to extricate myself when I’ve become so emotionally entangled. Granted, the detangling can be done…but the process stings.

Carl Rogers, one of the most influential psychologists ever (and a personal favorite of mine), is quoted as saying “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” So that person who I am, the Me who joyfully invests and who feels a lot of angst when something ends ….I’m going to learn to love her, rather than scorn her. I’ll try to move into the pain and accept it, rather than berate myself when I feel it. And I’ll replace my old delusional image of pseudo-hippie future me with a more realistic one: 50-something, with reddish-brownish hair (because when I go gray, I’m going to add red. You just wait), clad in jeans, energetic, and engaged with what she’s undertaken. Full of all kinds of emotion and probably telling someone about it. Full of hope. Fully me.

How I lost a brother and gained a sister in one day

The most poignant moments of my life sneak up on me. Granted, some of them I saw coming: when I married my Jebbo, when I held each of my babies for the first time. I imagined these would be unforgettable, life-altering moments, and they were. But more often than not, the emotions that drive the snapshot images that form the tapestry of my life come in a rush and knock me on my ass. It feels a lot like being punched in the gut.

I got metaphorically punched right in the gizzard last Saturday. My brother got married. I would have to be an idiot, or really un-self-aware, to imagine that this day would pass without any moments that I will remember for the rest of my life. So, I knew it was going to be an emotional day. The when of it, though, was a surprise, as it often is to me. I was in line to walk down the aisle. Right up to that point, it had been a hell of a hectic day. My existence had been consumed with the management of hair, clothes, everyone being at the right place at the right time, and attempts at gracefully maneuvering the egos and bodily functions of two small kids in formal attire (have you ever tried to help a coiffed and gowned [and stubborn] flower girl go pee?). After Evie disappeared  (for the umpteenth time) and required a cursory search party, I had a memorable fantasy about propping my feet up and downing Morgan ‘n’ diets until smiling came easy again.

Yet as the service started, all the noise in my head stopped. I stopped, and for the first time looked, really looked, around me. And who I saw was my mother. She was striking in her mother-of-the-groom regalia; that much I had already seen. Now, though, I saw through all of the formality and fuss and saw her fragility. Her pride, her tears, the bittersweetness of seeing her son happy yet realizing that he has really grown up. I saw my dad, farmer-gone-debonair in his tux and cufflinks, his eyes glistening and red-rimmed as he waited with Mom. For a man I have never seen cry, he seemed markedly unabashed about wearing his heart on his sleeve. The therapist in me cheered while the little girl in me wanted to comfort her daddy. I left my place in line to hug both of them. Cue my own tears, the cup of emotion finally runneth over.

That’s when I got my sock in the gut: “my little brother is getting married.” In a flash I remembered him as a guileless toddler, following me around the house because I held his tractors captive; as the little guy on the elementary playground that I felt compelled to look out for at recess; as a teen stumbling drunk and breaking Mom’s lamp, spurring a secret between he and I that wouldn’t leak for almost 10 years. As a young man leaving home, moving into his first apartment and trying to find his way in life. As the brother who had grown to be one of my closest friends. He was no longer a child in any way. He hasn’t been for a long time, but this moment cinched it in my mind. And just for the briefest of seconds, I felt a pang of loss. Our past is gone. Our little Michl family of four is no more.

In almost the same breath, I realized all I was about to gain. I stood at the back of the church, doors to the sanctuary thrown open, music changing to organ. It was my turn to walk down towards that nervous and joyful man at the altar, my brother. Before I started I looked back and saw Abby. She was already starting to cry as she clutched her father’s arm. My heart squeezed when I looked at her, and I remembered that already, I love her like a sister. I want her to be in my family. I am happy to say goodbye to the past if it means that she will be a part of our future.

And this is the snapshot image that will remain when I look back on the day. I’ll remember other things, like Evie crawling under a pew and screaming during the ceremony, like the best man’s speech (which was another of those “sock me in the gut” moments, but that’s a story for another day), like losing and serendipitously finding my sunglasses, like eating a Skittle that I thought was a Reese’s Pieces (and this, my friends, is not a good surprise if you’re me). It was a day filled with laughter and tears, dirty jokes and cocktails, family and friends. It was an honor to be a part of it. Though I did have to let go of my “baby” brother, I got him back as a peer and friend, and I also got a sister out of the deal. I am so freaking happy about the whole damn thing that I can barely wipe the cheesy smile off of my face every time I think about it. Cheers, once again, to Nate and Abby!!

Today I eulogize you, Jena Johnson

You know, people don’t eulogize each other often enough. I looked it up, the meaning of eulogy is “speech or writing about a person or thing” and it CAN be a living person or thing (though often eulogies happen at funerals). Yeah, we do a bang-up job giving eulogies and tributes and heartfelt speeches and poems when someone dies. I guess it’s kind of a cultural thing to do. But let’s face it, folks, when it comes right down to it, saying these things when a person is gone is really nice, but then the person-of-honor doesn’t get to appreciate what’s being said (except perhaps in spirit). It’s a little depressing, if you think about it. As for me, I say to hell with social convention (again). I’m gonna go ahead and eulogize you if I darn well feel like it, and I’ll do it while you’re alive! So today, I pay tribute to my dear friend Jena (Tauriella) Johnson. She just had a birthday, and so maybe this is my gift to her. A birthday eulogy, yes, that sounds about right.

Some would look at the environment of our lives and make the assumption that Jena and I became friends out of necessity—and this is probably partly true. When you live in a town as small as Exeter, the pool of potential buddies is small and somewhat contrived by means beyond of your control. You make friends with the people around you, usually your neighbors or classmates, or you don’t have friends, because there aren’t any other people. Period.

Jena and I were the only two little girls at a particular daycare setting one summer, and we became fast friends. From that summer on (I think we were 4 and 5, respectively), we were pretty much inseparable. Looking back we were probably a likely duo to get along as well as we did, two spunky, bright, creative little girls, both without sisters, both fans of mischief and invention. She liked coming to my house to drink real Mountain Dew and record ourselves interviewing each other. I liked her house due to its central location (closer to the pool!) and neverending supply of frozen fruit slush cups and Monopoly. I was also convinced that there were secret passages in her house or at the very least bodies buried in her basement or yard (Jena’s house was an old Victorian that used to be inhabited by doctors…and I’d read a lot of books), so I spent a fair amount of time convincing her to go on fool’s errands searches with me. Beyond the appeal of each other’s abodes, we just got along. We liked the same things. We went to the same church. We had complementary personalities (with some clashing mixed in there from time to time). We had the same core group of other friends. It just worked. She was my playmate, my business partner (the market on homemade bookmarks is killer in 5th grade), my teammate, my co-pilot, and the keeper of my secrets all throughout my youth.

As we grew up we remained close, even through moves, marriages, and now children. It’s not like we’ve never had our rough spots—we have—but what friendship hasn’t? At the end of the day, we were there for each other, and I feel pretty strongly that it’s always going to be this way. Just when I think maybe we’ve grown apart, that maybe I’ve got something going on in my life that she isn’t aware of, she hits me out of the blue with some spot-on question or comment about it, and I realize that she knows me as well as she ever did. She’s a beautiful, kind, smart, and generous woman, who I personally watched blossom into one of the best moms around (I once heard her say, and I quote, “Kids ruin lives!” Awesomely, I was 5 months pregnant at the time. She was being facetious, but it was still hilarious. Less than two years later she became one of the most doting mothers I can think of). I’m quite proud to know her, and I’m even prouder to be able to call her my friend.

So yes, we probably became friends out of necessity. Maybe it’s still a little bit that way: we’re friends because we always were, and because the roots are so deep that we can’t uproot them now. But I think it’s more than that. The necessity of our friendship does not negate the destiny of our friendship, the fact that perhaps we were both put in that small town, in that tiny daycare, at the same time, out of all of the towns and daycares in the world and times in the continuum because we were supposed to be friends. I feel so grateful that destiny was on my side on this one. So, Jena Johnson, thank you for being you. Thank you for being a part of my life for 25 years, and thanks in advance for the next 50. I love you.

Now get out there and eulogize the living, folks! It’s the feel-good activity of the summer, I promise.

I birthed a dissertation

For the past few years, I’ve been in a habit of giving birth every twenty-one months. We welcomed our sweet Evie in late November of 2007. Twenty-one months later in early September of 2009, dear Jonah joined us. And twenty-one months after that, in June of 2011, I birthed something entirely different: a dissertation. It tickles me that things just happened to turn out this way: for the past several months various people have been taken with asking me, “So, aren’t you about due for another one?” while glancing down meaningfully at my babyless midsection. And after all of the eye-rolling that I bestowed upon each and every person who asked me, I guess I was ready to give birth again. Just not to a kid.

Granted, this damn dissertation has been gestating for quite some time; in fact, I’d mark its conception at happening in late January 2008, when my topic first occurred to me and I started reviewing literature. (Yes, conceiving a dissertation is actually a lot less fun—and a lot more of a solitary activity— than conceiving a child.) So, we’re talking a whopping 42-month gestation period here. Makes the nine+ months that I carried each of my children seem like chump change. Though carrying the babies around in my ever-expanding magic belly was definitely physically harder, psychologically carrying around my dissertation caused increasing amounts of stress, discomfort, and urgency as the time of birth drew near— just like being pregnant. True, my dissertation didn’t make me have to pee in the night, but it did make me nauseous from time to time. I’m pretty sure it even left stretch marks somewhere in my brain.

And you know, babies kind of grow themselves while they’re still in the womb. I mean, there are definitely do’s and don’ts for a healthy pregnancy and all of that, but even under dire maternal circumstances, babies have continued to develop normally and on a set timetable (for example, week 11: fingernails and organ function begins. Week 20: tongue is fully formed). People who don’t even know they’re pregnant can grow a baby, for crying out loud! Dissertations, not so much. Left to their own devices, they gather dust, take up hard drive space, become outdated, and eat a gaping crevice right through your soul. Maybe writing a dissertation is more like taking care of a baby that has already been born, because you have to actually do something to it to ensure that it grows properly. Yeah, that’s probably closer.

Yet it still feels like I just gave birth, that something that has been developing within me for a long time is finally out of me. Where there once was nothing, now there is a 176-page document, and I made it. Granted, it’s definitely not as wondrous as looking down into the eyes of your newborn child and knowing that you made that. But finishing my dissertation is still a pretty okay feeling. It’s a little bit of a bummer that no one threw me a shower, unless you count the proposal meeting with my committee, and there were no cute party games or mixed nuts at that (arguably). I have received some very appreciated congratulations and well wishes, though no presents have arrived just yet (for my mailing address, please contact me).

All in all, yeah, I think this was a good thing for me to do in 2011. It seems to have given me small pieces of the fulfillment of having nurtured and birthed something without the aftermath of losing tons of sleep and having sore boobs for 6-12 months. However, upon reflection, this all does beg a question that I for one find to be rather intriguing…what the heck am I going to be up to twenty-one months from now? Guess I'll let you know come March of 2013.

Girl Scout Gains

I used to be a Girl Scout. Not that I was a good scout—I really wasn’t. If I remember right, I was usually late for meetings, always forgot my dues, looked jankity in my uniform because I was abysmal at arranging the various pieces, and had a tendency to be a bit on the insolent side with our leader. Even in those tender pre-tween years, I don’t know if I ever quite bought into the concept of Girl Scouts.

Regardless, Girl Scouts taught me at least one valuable lesson. It came in the form of this little ditty we used to sing: “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.” I’ve sung this tune to myself throughout the years (literally! But in my head), to remind myself that it’s okay to make new friends. I know it might seem silly that anyone would need to remind themselves of this—shouldn’t it be straightforward? For me, it hasn’t been. And I’ve often asked myself why this is.

I tend to explain this hesitation to delve into what I consider to be a “true friendship” (which perhaps I shall define in a latter post) with someone else by explaining my roots. I grew up in a town bordered by cornfields (or wheat or milo or soybeans, whatever), where the population vacillated between 650 and 700 people. My graduating class had 16 kids. Eleven of us were together through every year of school—preschool to senior year. Of that group, many of us ran around in diapers together, as our parents were friends. (I was even known to share a pacifier with one special friend.) I watched them learn to read. I watched them hammer balls over the fence playing kicksoccer. I watched them fall in love for the first time, get hurt for the first time; I laughed and cried and loved and lost with all of them. For 18 years.

It’s a special thing to be raised in this way. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But to go out into the world beyond my hometown, where I was expected to pick up and make “friends” with people I’d never met? It was, to say the least, difficult for me. I didn’t think it was going to be this way. I was really good at meeting people, at introducing myself and striking up casual conversation. But I was really bad at taking a casual friendship to the next level. It felt like I couldn’t do that, like no matter how much I liked the person, they would never be a real friend. There wasn’t enough depth. These new people weren’t there when I’d been rejected by my eighth grade crush, they’d never driven with me on a sidewalk, they didn’t pick me first for their spelling baseball team in third grade. They didn’t know me; they couldn’t possibly. And I didn’t know how to let them know me.

Midway through college, I hit my stride. I had what psychologists might call a series of “corrective emotional experiences”—first I (accidentally) let a smaller group of folks know me, and I was surprised and grateful when they accepted me, even when I was real with them. And then I let a larger group of folks know me, when I joined a staff of resident assistants who I lived, worked, and played with. I came to know that friendships with people I’d just met could be just as meaningful—if not more so—as lifelong friendships, just in a different way. And, importantly, I learned that I was at least a somewhat likable person, which I hadn’t believed prior to college (yet I also hadn’t known that I didn’t believe it! See?! Knowing is half the battle.).

I still struggle. I still tend to take awhile to move things past superficiality in new friendships. In some situations, this has been a detriment to me. Yet in other ways, it has been a boon, because those friendships that I have taken the risk of moving forward with have been amazing. And because there are relatively few of them, I’ve been able to invest in them a great deal of emotional energy.

In my next posts, I plan to pay homage to both my silver and my gold friends, because they are both irreplaceable parts of my life story, and of me. So thanks, Girl Scouts…I guess you were good for something after all.

On being a defective woman

Okay, I need you to be honest with me here. Dig deep if you have to. Have you ever done something, said something, felt something that made you feel like you were somehow transgressing on your gender? As if somehow, whatever you did made you that you were *less* of a woman or *less* of a man?

A couple of months ago one of my male friends jokingly asked me if I’d do some ironing for him. I laughed at him, and my amusement was twofold: first of all, it’s laughable that he’d ask me to do this for him. (Guess he hadn’t seen me: sporting my awesome, bright green “Please pass the Gender Equity” t-shirt? Sitting on the UNL Chancellor’s Commission for the Status of Women for two years? Critically analyzing gender messages in every effing commercial, ever, because I can’t/won’t turn “feminist brain” off?) Second, I’m terrible at ironing. I use the “wrinkle release” setting on my clothes dryer rather than iron my stuff.

So I laugh at this friend, but what do I say to him? Well, first I chide him for asking and tell him to do his own damn ironing. I ask why he didn’t ask one of the other boys to do his bidding. The next thing out of my mouth: “Anyway, I can’t iron. I guess I’m a defective woman.” And we all laughed and it was all sunshine and rainbows over cocktails, and it was a joke, but in hindsight…was it a bonafide anxiety slipping out of my mouth, albeit couched in sarcasm?

You see, bias (which would include racism and sexism, among other things) has a funny way of being implicit, which is cognitive psychology jargon for “so deeply ingrained into our minds that we don’t even have control over it.” Explicitly, I most definitely strive for equality and attempt to battle oppression across multiple domains. However, those firmly implanted nasty little implicit prejudices come tumbling out of my psyche sometimes, unwelcome as they might be. (Think you’re above racism, sexism, religious bias? I encourage you to go to https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/takeatest.html , try some of the tests, and see how they come out. Very few of us are immune to implicit -isms.)

Gender-wise, this implicit stuff really bites me in the ass sometimes. As in when I feel that the disorganization of our home reflects that I am some kind of organic snafu of a woman, some aberration of nature. (This is demoralizing to admit. I cringe as I write this.) As in when I internally feel like an utter failure when I think about all of the domestic stuff that my mom and my grandma were able to do that I really suck at. As in how awful I sometimes feel in acknowledging that I have little aspiration to be a stay-at-home mom because I love my work and enjoy having a professional identity. Explicitly, I can self-soothe by reminding myself that there’s no right or wrong way to be a woman, that I’m not defective, and that I can be whatever kind of woman that I want to be and she will be great. Implicitly…shades of self-loathing and guilt rage on. Damn you, generations of societal brainwashing.

I think I’m on the winning end of this, though. I’m well aware of some of those ugly, embarrassing implicit beliefs that run so counter to the beliefs that I explicitly hold dear, and knowing is half of the battle (thanks for the wisdom, GI Joe). And I’m not going to stand for them. I’m going to continue to stand up to them, to make conscious and concerted efforts to transcend them. So take that, brain. And by the way, screw you, social convention. This woman is too awesome to be defective.

Irony in the air: You say goodbye, and I say hello

There’s irony in the air tonight—at exactly the same moment that I’m saying goodbye to my grad school family, I’m saying hello to my high school family. This weekend is my ten-year high school class reunion. Thus I said my first goodbye to the Exeter Class of 2001 ten years ago, almost to the date. Looking back, I struggled with that goodbye as well. I remember being the sodden mess (the one I expected to be last night) the night of our senior party. I remember listening to that damn Vitamin C song about graduation and “friends forever” in my car every day of the summer and crying every time. I remember feeling like I’d never find another group of friends, that I’d never love anyone like I loved my classmates. And actually, pieces of that worry came true, I suppose…I did not and can never “replace” my high school friends. They are unique, and awesome, and the friendships that you make in high school—especially a tiny rural school like the one I went to, where most of us were together every day from kindergarten to senior year—are precious for a lifetime. However, continuing to love my high school friends did not have the catastrophic effect that I’d expected at the time: that I would never have other friends that meant as much to me. The truth is that I did make new friends, in time. I did find other places and other groups with which I belonged. I need to tuck that fact into my mind and let it breathe hope into me, because I’m struggling with the very same set of worries today, only this time it’s because my grad school friends are leaving. Ah, it’s funny how history repeats itself. It’s also funny how even when know we have changed and grown, in times of stress we default to the same old set of insecurities.

As recently as a few short months ago, I might have looked back and scoffed at myself for being so “dramatic” about the way I handled my high school ending. I would have probably thought something like, Oh, well, you’re just a lot better at emotional regulation now than you were ten years ago. Now, though, I’m not so sure that what I did back then was overly dramatic or “wrong” or “immature.” I was definitely not blunting any emotion or avoiding anything; I was merely feeling what I needed to feel in the moment and coping with that in the best way I knew how. I’m doing much the same thing now, in different ways. Is my emotional regulation or my coping any better or any worse now, really? I honestly don’t know the answer to that.

This all being said, what I’m ready for is a weekend of fun with my high school friends. I fully expect to cry at some point over the weekend; after all, we’re all going to have to say “goodbye” again at the end of it. (Have you figured out by now that I’m not very fond of endings?) But mostly, I expect to greet, eat, drink, dance, and be merry. I’m gonna see that irony in the air and laugh my way right through it.