Loo is Leaving.

I hate today. I hate being a grown up and I hate being forced into making decisions that feel a lot like playing God. Yesterday, I let you live. But today? Today, I end you. But here we are this today that I’ve already changed twice, and it's upon us, and I have to do this – and my mister is going with me to hold my hand, to make certain I don’t flee the vet’s office screaming “Run, Loo! Run!” with my all-done Great Dane, which is exactly what I did Monday.

Loo is leaving. We’ve had pancakes for breakfast and lasagna for lunch. She’s had oatmeal pie and a ham bone. I’ve bathed her still larger-than-life even when withered body, rubbed the webbings between her toes. I’ve laid on the floor spooning my girl, negotiating, flip flopping, finding and losing conviction. Weeping. I’m not certain I can compare this loss to any yet suffered, though, I am by no means the first to experience it, and Loo isn’t our first pet to meet this fate. But for me, this is different. With her, it’s different. I’m sure many of you have been in this exact spot – and I’ll apologize now for not realizing just how deep the agony of it was. Sad yes, sad before – but this. This shit is agony.

There is a long series of unfortunate events that has led us to This Moment more quickly than we imagined, even though we’d discussed This Moment as recently as last Friday, before the terrible happenings even occurred. But then they did, and here we are and now it’s time.

But, oh, my Loo. My big, stinky, slobbering girl, Talulah Sassafrass Bellamy. She is a Blue Merle Great Dane and ironically, before moving to our little town – the only other singular time I’d been here was the day we got Talulah. We took her from her mother when she was still so new her grey hadn’t set in but instead she was rather … purple. I shit you not – a purple puppy. We sought her out for a reason, see. Long short of it – our little bungalow in East Dallas had been robbed. We had a dog, a handsome if not all-fearing fellow named Niko. Our burglars maced poor Niko, and I was pissed. Figured ol’ boy needed someone bigger to protect him. I felt incredibly vulnerable, too. I wanted a presence. So, a Great Dane it was. And a presence she is.

With paws the size of saucers, she grew clumsily into her full form of boob-high (next to me) and two hundred pounds. From our very first outing with her, everywhere we went, folks were Dane experts. Folks with weenie dogs, folks with labs, folks with cats and no dogs at all. It wasn’t just her largesse they commented on, but rather a whole battery of Things You Should Know Since The Internet Might Not Inform You Well Enough Factoids on Danes. We were shocked to discover how often and quickly strangers were to point out a typical Great Dane’s lifespan – eight years (and that’s pushin’ it!) We knew that. They’d say things like “Wow, that’s a really incredible dog. Too bad she’s gonna die in a few years.” Or, someone with more tact once said, “Isn’t she majestic? If only they lived longer. You *do* know that Dane’s have notoriously short life spans, right?”

Loo is the kind of girl that slobbers Richard from elbow to wrist and hard-pokes him with her big blunt nose if he slaps my ass, or if I emit any sound of despair or fright. She never says anything unless there is something serious to say, she’s never abused her booming ‘wooof.” I’ve never heard her whine or whimper. If she gets upset, or scared, she pants. We pet her, beg her to close her hot hole. If Richard and I get sideways, she’s there to nudge and poke until we hug it out – mediating. If our boy is rough housing with friends or cousins, she’s there to referee. When I was pregnant with each of our children, she never left my side. Matter of fact, when we brought our first child home from the hospital, she aimed to help me out – started lactating herself. Of course, we didn’t take her up on this, even though there were a few nights new motherhood and exhaustion had me considering “why not?!” She is in constant watch over both our children, ever on their heels, always vigilant. She’s laid at my feet through every page I’ve ever written.

Come year eight, even our former vet told us to start watching the clock – that we were on borrowed time. We still knew it. But Loo didn’t. She has kept on keeping on – defying most stereotypes specific to Blue Merles and then the general breed. She’s eleven – and that’s a freakin’ miracle! But after all of our years together, she’s going out for the very reason I sought her in the first place – for doing her job, for protecting me.

You might not think a raccoon is anything to fear, but we encountered one this past Sunday who was the Kujo of Coons. It was rabid, it charged me, Loo moved faster than she has in more than two years and nailed that little fucker. She grabbed it by the neck, crunched it between her teeth and promptly slammed it into the base of a silver maple tree. The kind of tree that looks like it’s pulling up it’s skirt and showing you it’s panties every time the wind blows. The same tree we hang our son’s piñata from on each of his birthdays. I stood under that tree’s panties and pulled my now withered, elderly protector off that coon, screeching all the while.

As soon as we were a clear distance from it, Talulah put her giant nose in the palm of my hand and pushed. She was so proud. She’d done something very good and she knew it. But in the doing – she’d bitten a rabid animal and that little fact would set all kinds of unpleasant things into motion that included but were not limited to me low-talking to the Animal Control officer to take his leave or I’d bite him myself, to our old vet in Dallas being so far out of date on state laws and regulations and telling me Loo needed to be destroyed immediately, her head cut off and sent to Austin where they’d check her brain for virus – and further, myself, my son, my husband and our toddler who was never even outside – would all four have to have the dreaded rabies protocol and ps? Those come at the low, low, save-your-life price of two to eight THOUSAND dollars PER person. God help any poor folk who get attacked by a rabid animal – they be screwed.

Flash forward to a more subdued, calm, comforting voice of the amazing and wonderful Dr. Steve Albers. We first met Steve when he accompanied his child to our son’s birthday party two years ago, they were pre-school mates. He met Loo then, and we spoke then about This Moment. When to recognize it, how most Danes didn’t endure like she had and so forth. So I called Steve. He said other vet’s opinion was certainly an option, but not the only option. Another option included quarantine and the human rabies protocol which ironically, when administered to dogs, is not two to eight thousand dollars, but rather closer to about four hundred when all said and done. This has been proven affective for healthy, vaccinated dogs. “Let’s check her over,” he said.

The once-over revealed some things we already knew, and some things we didn’t. We knew she was arthritic (and I credit my homeopathic approach to this for it not yet getting the better of her), we knew she was beginning to lose her hearing, that her eyes were getting a bit fogged, a tad milky. We knew she was so old no amount of bathing would make her smell any less than mildly foul and that mildness would last mere hours before returning to full-on rank. We knew she had cartilage slippage on her hind heels. And on top of all that, ol’ girl has been incontinent for close to a year. I promise you – the only thing to rival an incontinent Dane would be a horse. And the only thing that can poot and toot worse than an old Dane is an elephant, but who puts a dog down for pooping her bed?

Shut up, I know.

The kicker though, was cancer. Ol’ girl has a mass that hasn’t metastasized, but will. Bottom line? Talulah, in all she’s survived, cannot survive the cruel trappings of the required ninety day quarantine. We can’t do it to her. We won’t. Contrary to the belief that dogs are dogs and they can all endure the great outdoors, it just ain’t so for Danes, and the brutal Texas summer temps are fast approching. But now this God forsaken coon has come along, and things we could have had time to address, to navigate until This Moment came naturally – have stacked against us and left us no choice. Even though I want to rail and rant about how she’s a statistical phenom, has already beaten every odd… she might could now! She could possibly… maybe?

And I am suddenly a petulant child who wants to stomp my foot, throw myself in the floor and pitch a wall-eyed fit. I’ve cried more in the past two days than I have collectively over the past two years. My kind parents have offered to relieve me of this, to take her for me… but of course, I can’t let them do that. I can’t let her go without me whispering in her ear. So instead they’ll watch our children while my man and I go do the grown up thing. The self-less thing. The terrible, heart wrenching right thing.

So yeah. I’m already deep in my cup. I’m a wrecked mess. (So do beg a natural pardon for this rough cut, once-read entry.) I’ll never be ready for this. Talulah is at my feet now. Listening to all my keyboard clacking and sniffling. And we’re gonna go now. And I’m going to whisper in her ear…

Safe travels, ol’ girl, easy passage. I’ll catch you on the flip side.  I love you. God, I love you. My constant companion, my guardian and protector. And thank you. I haven’t the words for this type of gratitude, for this type of partnership. Thank you… for every moment. You have been every single thing I ever wanted in a dog. You are my good, good girl.

I hate today. I hate right now. But now is here. And here we go.

Not My Sentiments Exactly

What is it about death that chokes the natural flow of words between us humans? At some point in time, everyone has lost someone, everyone knows someone who has crossed over, left, died naturally, suddenly, violently or otherwise. It’s always a gong-banging event – when you hear or read or are informed of someone passing – it’s never not shocking. It never doesn’t steal breath, whether it was expected or not.

Almost two years ago now, I spent days and weeks at the bedside of a friend who was dying an unkind death from cervical cancer. We knew it was coming. We waited for it. At some point, we even told her to go, to quit hanging on. And when she did, after the most fierce battle I’ve ever witnessed to stay alive – we no less sobbed. Her absence was no less shocking. You could almost hear the vacancy she left in our world. I’ll never forget hiding a card from her husband that had come in an arrangement the day before she died. She’d not even gone yet, and already – the trite tide rolled in.

When someone expires, even the most loose-lipped folks go all Hallmark Robot-Automation with their expression. The outpouring when someone loses a loved one has become as non-plussing and ineffective as the redundant “Happy Birthday” song, playing like a broken record over and over again. Here are some samples of the same, same, same:

“I am so sorry for your loss." Or, intoning a Billy Graham wanna-be who never made it past directing services in funeral parlors for the disenfranchised: “May you and yours find peace and comfort in these sorrowful times.” And I do beg pardon – but this stand-alone saying just outright irritates me: “You and your family are in my thoughts and prayers.” It is unnecessary and should go without saying that if anyone you know is facing such loss, that naturally, their friends and acquaintances will think of them, and pray for them. Or meditate on them, send vibes, burn a candle - whatever their proclivity.

Why not say, “WHAT? Shut the fuck up, he DIED? Jesus Christ! Oh no! Well, congratulations. You can officially mark this off your list of worst possible things that could ever happen to you. I hate this for you. Go drink heavily and ugly cry. Call me if you need a lift.”

Too casual? Feel free to leave out the expletives. Or, try:

“I am shocked that he up and expired without warning. I didn’t know him, but I know and love you and this sucks ass. It ain’t gonna be easy, but I’ll be praying that you get the most kick-ass casseroles and that someone will pass you a flask at the funeral and you’ll be too hung over to actually feel any pain for a while.”

Still too informal?

Then be brave – say something of your own experience with loss. Make mention of what got you through it, give suggestion for what might be comforting – be it love and support from others, drinking heavily while going though pictures and memories, repeating a ritual that was shared with the dearly departed – whatever. But don’t for the love of God, go all unnaturally reverent using the contrived, canned words of the internet certified Reverend Jimmy John from the funeral parlor. Don’t play priest. Don’t copy Hallmark. Speak from your heart of what you know of loss and do it with out the nauseating, impersonal formality. That’s comforting. That’s wisdom. That is genuine sentiment.

I would think that social media and the constant one-up-man-ship in status updates might inspire folks to up their game on birthdays, births, deaths, celebrations. Say something no one else did. If you don’t know what to say – then say that. But don’t make some poor soul who is raw with the exhaustion of unthinkable loss read ten million messages saying the exact same thing, after which they will go read equal amounts of florist cards with the same scrolly-printed regurgitation, then shake lines of hands muttering more of still the same. It dulls death. It inspires nothing. It comforts not.

At some point I’ll pick on the over-used worn out sentiments of “Happy Birthday!” and “Congratulations!” In the mean time, should someone you know suffer the extraordinary shock and pain of loss – come up with something extraordinary to say about it. Your very own sentiment, exactly.

One Hand, Less Shitty

Now that we’ve covered everything from who I am and what I do to suicide, dreams, mothering, lunatics and loyalty – I can’t put this post off any further. It is something that has confounded me since childhood. Something that even still, mid-thirties, I sometimes struggle to understand. Its shitty friends. I'm not talking about acquaintances, or folks we just party with occasionally and generally enjoy - I'm talking about those friends that have real access to you, the close ones. At a later date, when I can make sense of it myself, I’ll talk about Breaking Up and Moving On and Letting Go and all that bullshit, but for now – I’m muddling through this still unbelievable concept that most people aren’t as great as I think they are, or were, or could be. Many who you think are or will be – aren’t. They’re shitty. Lame. Disappointing.

My Other-Mother, Gerrie Poutous, told my very best and greatest, irreplaceable, one and only Alexis and I, years and years ago – that if by the time we hit 35 years of age and could count true friends on one hand, we’d be damn lucky. This was when I was working out dress designs with nine bridesmaids, which would almost fill two hands and I just couldn’t imagine any of them being un-true, less than great or… shitty. But Gerrie's math dictated otherwise.

My friendship with Alexis has been the bane of many’s existence. Some finding it unusual and it’s certainly uncommon – the breadth and width of what exists between her and I. It has generated rifts in our friendships with others, causing everyone outside of the Jenny and Alexis bubble to feel like just that – outsiders. In the early years of our declaration and solid knowledge that we’d be BFFs far past the end of time – many were dubious, including Other Mother, who had both enjoyed spectacular friendships and grieved the shocking ends of other assumed to be forever-friends. Thus, her dry warning that was worded much better than I’ve paraphrased here. It’s stuck with me ever since and in specific moments, it’s as though we’re back under her gazebo with our Loreal Coco Bean lips, the late 90's super-flare jeans and Fair Isle sweaters, smoking Marlboro Lights, ashing into this excessively vaginal looking Pepto-pink ashtray and through tendrils of smoke, Yia Yia Poutous low talks her wisdom. I remember it hanging in the grey air and Alexis and I telling each other with our eyes “Never us. Not you. Not me.”

And it’s not been us. We have survived and thrived, the Alexis and I. Her family is mine, mine is hers and she is my For and With Everything Friend. Spinning out of control in my early twenties? She spun right along with me squealing “Weeeeeeeee” all the while. Settling down mid-to-late twenties, we were Girls in the Mirror - trading tips on things like peeling garlic and laughed while dumping entire bottles of Chianti into sauces du jour. Martha Stewart didn’t have shit on us (and still doesn’t – aside from minions, millions and mansions plural. We still do it better and plus, we’re hot.)

No matter where I’ve been in my life, she’s been right there - holding the door saying “Yes” or, stepping on my neck with a lead foot screaming “No!” like only this tiny but fierce Greek force can do. She and her and all things Alexis, Lecksee, Alekka, Nouna, Lex - somewhat spoiled me – leading me to believe that all friends were, if not so stellar, if not so beautiful, if not so positively and consistently fascinating - at least good, at least somewhat loyal, at the very least invested. That even if the all-other-friends were outside the bubble – they would still rise up, be like us, or at least want to be. But they weren't. They're not. Maybe they just couldn't. 

But then again, there are some people who are just shitty. Shitty people make shitty friends. 

It took me a while and great distance along with re-reading some Maya Angelou to realize that with a particularly shitty crowd of friends that I’d fostered and nurtured for years - that old saying “with friends like these, who needs enemies?” was really always in the back of my mind. I knew they were snakes even with their perfect lipstick and cute share-able clothes. I knew no topic was safe, no secret sacred, and that someone was always on their shit list. It was always someone’s turn and woe be the one! Those that broached the fold were questionable and usually verbally flayed to pieces in gossip unless they had a lake house, or until they made some grand gesture, or were funny enough at the bar the weekend before (read: paid the whole tab).

I coasted for many years thinking myself immune to their special blend of Fuck You Very Much. I thought our long histories together  somehow protected me from their venom. But somewhere in my subconscious – I knew there were ulterior motives, agendas along with turn-coat, fair-weatheredness that me, in all my fix-it-confident glory, thought ...but they wouldn’t do that to me, it's different, with me, even though I’d witnessed the long parade of their friendship victims. 


In reading the Maya Angelou and secretly eating up every one of Oprah's interviews with her - The Great Maya A. repeatedly said something to the effect of: when people tell you who they are, when they show you themselves, you better believe them. Never have truer words been spoken. I did myself a disservice by continuing to believe that some people were better than what they demonstrated time and time again. There were red flags littering the fields of these friendships.

Then, there’s the dreaded opposite sex best friend. Who, unless is a flaming homosexual that you also share cute clothes with – their mere presence generates rumors with the above type. (Omigod, they’re totally banging. I just know it.)  I have always had a handful of very close male friends. It’s how my own mister and I came to fall in love – we were best friends. We cracked each other up. There was innate loyalty and even as just friends, he had a territory-marking protection over me. We laid the foundation for a kick-ass marriage. I really liked Rw’s teeth and swagger, I loved (love still) to just watch the way his mouth moved over words. He really liked my boobs, my feet and most of my little ways and if it weren’t for liquor and premarital sex, we might not have ever discovered how perfectly well we fit together.

But that doesn’t mean that all boy-best-friends turn husband material. Not at all. For me, my boy best friends were great because there wasn’t all the bullshit drama that comes with girlfriends. There wasn’t jealousy, back-biting, or them secretly being in total love with my mister and blindly (and unsuccessfully) attempting to ransack our marriage to get a foot in the door. (Ah hem, you know who you are… bygones.) And they never borrowed purses without returning them, a bonus.

In spite of all that, I discovered that boy best friends, just like hormonal self serving women, can also be the worst, shittiest friends ever. One in particular stands out currently. I’ve been friends with this cat for twenty two years. We’ve tangled in every capacity possible – we’ve hated each other with certain ferocity, we loved each other the same, we drifted, reunited and stayed good, true and constant for a great many years, until recently. The term “Bros (and Jenny) before hoes” has always been a quiet part of his credo… until recently.

He has seemingly and unfortunately fallen victim to an ultimatum from a generic, mediocre at best, dishwater-blond girl whose nose conjures images of W.C. Fields and whose only redeeming quality is her overly large white teeth. She has the personality of a wet noodle, the saddlebags of a gymnast-gone-soft and she’s far behind the eight ball by way of At This Point In Life – still lives with her parents, has been unemployed until recently and won that job only as favor and not by merit. So naturally, she’s insecure, see. She can’t possibly have her boyfriend constantly measuring her against me. And I agree, it is grossly unfair (to her.) It makes her do nutty things like scour Google for pictures or information about me, harass me while I vacation with my family, steal quotes from this very blog – sentences selectively chosen from each post, arranged in a way intended to intimidate. She’s so un-smart she even misquoted the stolen quotes. If it were 1989, I’d have received it by postman with mismatched letters cut from magazines and pasted on notebook paper.

Conversely, this same friend of mine and boyfriend of hers can’t possibly start over with a new chick. He in his own right is difficult, and by the sheer stubbornness and staying power as a stray that’s been fed, she has outlasted all of his other “Just Ass” girls and has a toothbrush at his place. It’d be inconvenient to throw it out. And by golly – he’d miss that consistent albeit mediocre ass and the light cleaning of his man-space she affords while he watches Bill O'Reilly. I get it. Complacency is a killer! A very wise woman reminded me yesterday that she's not the shitty friend, he is. She's merely the symptom. Just as I am not the problem in their broke-ass relationship. Me too, a symptom. True as that is, it no less diminishes her teeth, saddlebags or psychosis, nor the fact that she outright attacked me. Remember what I said in the beginning - all's fair in love and war - and writing is both.

Ultimately he's given up one of the greatest friends he’s ever had over it. Not that I would suggest or want him to dump her benign ass, but rather have the balls to man-up and say "We're friends, get over it." The girls mentioned above and their inability to mentally or emotionally be anymore than they were at eighteen cost themselves the only one of them that is what I expected and thought them to be: loyal, true – above and beyond. And they know it, even if only the newly gone best boy friend will admit it out loud (I can still hear your thoughts, man). They are less for it, individually and collectively.

The question it all begs is: was it ever really true? Were they ever really friends? At what point does someone just… turn?

It seems my sweet Gerrie was right. I’m damn lucky with the ones I have. And they're equally blessed to have me. Because I am the kind of friend I want and expect others to be. If I love you, I show it and you know it. (Ask Alexis. She just can’t say enough good things about me.)

That other cliché saying about friends or people coming into your life for a reason, a season and time – or something, might just be true. These people, friends turned foes or simply friendships with an exacting shelf life – I don’t necessarily regret them. I wouldn’t know what I know without them. I might not have realized the pure power and import and rareness of that bubble that Alexis and I still and will forever float in, or the genuinely precious value I have in those that fill thumb-through-ring-finger in counting. I might’ve unwittingly turned out to be a shitty friend myself.

None of this means that the crowds of people I am acquainted with that are not close friends are less than fabulous, or not valued. Everyone brings their own sauce to the table. I'll taste it, enjoy it and if it's great, say so and repeat. But in making new friends as an adult, I am cautious to a fault. Not ever fully trusting new people, having the quick ability to identify the difference between simple friends – lunching ladies and drinking buddies, from those I’d call first if something terrible were to happen. Or something phenomenal.

So, a nod to you fair weathered, less than great disappointments. It must be hard without me, certainly less fun. And I'm big enough to admit that I even miss some of their non-snake-ish ways, however few they might have been. Nonetheless and if nothing else - thanks for the lessons on how not to be. 

One hand, minus the recently severed pinky finger. And I’m getting to be okay with that.

Love Lies Loyally

There are all kinds of feel-good, fuzzy sentiments about friendship and loyalty but what does it all mean, really? Aside from our trusty canine friends, who else on earth can you be certain is actually, genuinely loyal to you?

I know loyalty. I’ve seen it. I’ve received it. I’ve given it. I’ve broken it, I’ve repaired it, I’ve demanded it, I’ve lost it and I’ve found it.

I could tell you stories all the live long day about loyalty and promise you it will be a huge thread running through my next book and because of such, I’ve been closely looking at the increasingly subjective term “loyalty.”

Not everyone will be loyal to you. Some you assume will, won’t. Especially women. We are catty, heartless bitches. I could give you a list of friends turned foes and their gross display of destroying the most basic definition of loyalty – but instead I’ll focus on some examples that have redefined the entire concept of loyalty and what it truly means.

First and of course, there’s family. I am the baby of four girls. Being my parent’s favorite has generated much chiding and jaw-flapping among my sisters and I, the oldest taking it the hardest because bless her heart, she IS the best! We are by nature a very competitive lot and have at times gone after each other with teeth bared and claws out. But still. They are my sisters. After all we’ve endured together up to this point in life, we’ve all finally learned how to fight fair. While we might throw cheap shots occasionally, most times a bi-annual long-winded but quickly forgiven puking of *“you-are-such-a-fucking-selfish-bitch-face-jack-ass-stupid-fuck-and-if-you-were-here-I’d-snatch-you-bald-headed-and-by-the-way-get-your-fucking-roots-done-you-lazy-ass!” And then we apologize, hug it out and not once in the tussle would we, or do we, or have we ever broken confidence or loyalty.

(*My eldest would never use the F word. Unless Obama won a second term. She’s Baptist AND Republican. Conversely, I’m the only of the sisters who doesn't require roots being done... yet.)

My sisters and I are a coven. We are exclusive and impossible to breach. I know secrets that would make your hair grow at hearing. And they know the most intimate details of me. My eldest witnessed me floating in a tub of monkey hair at my first attempt at lady-grooming and kindly told me “you missed a spot.” My second oldest had to check my bits while I was in labor last May, as I was certain it was not only gaping open, but my innards were falling out. Bless her for looking and reassuring me that no, it was all where it was supposed to be. My next-up sister will put all of her own strife and stress away, and does often, to listen to me blather the deets of me and mine. And then – and THEN! There’s our Mama. That woman is a vault. She’ll talk nasty about (and likely hex) people she’s never even met if they’ve crossed one of her girls, or our Daddy. Her aiding and abetting would put Karl Rove's best machinations to shame.

Not all family is like my immediate tribe. I’ve found sister-in-laws to be the worst kind of back-stabbing, word twisting, opportunistic traders, but… that’s another story.

On to friends. According to the 35,000 shrimp consumed at my wedding plus Facebook counting my “friends” at four-hundred-plus, I’ve got lots of friends. Tons. I’m just rolling in the friendships. Yet of all of those people, I can count on one hand how many of them I wholeheartedly trust in and believe that they are not only my friends and have my best interest at heart, but are fiercely loyal to me. Would squash and censure any negative talk about me by others. Would go East Dallas on anyone who hurt me. Would show up at any time of day or night that I needed them. Would and do keep my secrets, have and would protect me from harm and would never, ever betray or compromise our friendship. My most enduring, truly patient, generous in more ways possible to list here example is my soul sister, Alexis. She is the epitome of loyalty.

One hand. Minus a pinky finger.

And then there’s my man. My lovah. My baby-daddy, my partner in all things right, wrong, light, heavy, deep, shallow, trite and axis shifting. This man has been loyal to me since we were teenagers. Not to say we haven’t had our rows, splits, cracks and trials – who hasn’t? But we’ve walked through fire together and learned what true loyalty is, what it means, how to give it, how to never break it in any of the possible gathering, minute ways loyalty can be fractured over the course of such a long relationship. There was a toast given at our wedding that likend Rw and I to a pair of scissors – often moving in opposite directions, independently together and apart, but punishing anything that came between us. No one should know better how true that is that the man who said it. But that too, is another story.

So, what have I discovered? What is loyalty? Loyalty is telling your loyal-ee the truth even when it stings, and believing that the probable mad-storm over it will pass – and by God, you’ll be sitting there waiting when it does. It is having confidence to admit and apologize when you’ve fucked up. It’s not allowing the intervention of others to rock the foundation on which your relationship is built – be it by way of gossip, hearsay, assumption – listening or participating. It’s sticking up for your people, ferociously. It’s protecting their good name when someone tries to sully it. It comes without ultimatums – it is something that’s either innate to the relationship, or not.

It’s not keeping blackmail pictures of your baby sister’s grooming-gone-wrong. It’s the sister who knows exactly where you are when no one else on the face of the earth does. It’s the one who drives through a tornado in spite of her irrational fear of lightening and eighteen wheelers to be there simply because you said “I need you.” It’s an automatic ear on the phone from 287 miles away the second you’ve finished a chapter, and every morning since college. It’s kindly shutting haters down at restaurants in Galveston, or on back patios. It’s when your blood pressure rises at the mere thought of one of yours being wronged.

I’ve danced many jigs with people that in no way fit my found definition of loyalty, even recently. It’s been those, the one’s who’ve taken and expected loyalty without the reciprocation of it that have hammered home the importance of it, the requirement of it, the necessity and realization of just how rare loyalty is. What a gift it is to receive it.

For me, loyalty is Richie Wayne, Marmie, Poppy, Kellie, Amy, Cissy, Alexis, Carrie, Tina, Suzanne and my children.

Loyalty is born of and bred from true affinity, real love and honest connection. It might be unspoken but is still and same a tangible, breathing thing.

Loyalty is trust's spine. And I've got one hell of a backbone.

On Lunatics, Coo-Coo Birds, Emotional Terrorists and Blame Gamers

Lunatics: everyone knows one or some. Most families are saddled with one or some. It is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, to treat the ill-adjusted. Good people like Glenn Close create and are deeply involved in charities that raise funds and awareness for the mentally ill. Every other ad on television is about one depression drug or another. Catherine Zeta-Jones just came out of her bi-polar closet. A great many artists, writers, scholars and academics are known coo-coo birds. And so it goes, what use to be something only whispered or hidden, or otherwise not discussed – is now an accepted part of our society at large.

Okay. Sure. I get it. And I agree to a point. I mean, after all – it deserves attention and care. Awareness, too. Yes. But here’s the thing: has society become so accustomed to blame that everyone lines up like sheep and says “Yes! Me, me! I feel crappy! I’m a little blue! I can’t shake the stress! And I saw this commercial...” and expect to be slapped with a validating diagnosis of depression, pop a pill and make it all better? Where is the accountability? Where is the emotional responsibility? At what point did people stop looking at the choices they were or weren’t making in their lives in direct relation to their degree of contentment and happiness, or lack there of?

Now the above doesn’t go for the truly mentally insane. I realize they just may very well be unable to help it. I also strongly believe that those who cannot help it be removed from society. It’s the casually, morphingly-diagnosed depresees that I find irritating and overall lacking character and the gumption to look in the mirror and change whatever ails them.

But then there’s another breed - the somewhat silent, real-time, pendulum-swinging lunatics who sometimes function in the real world, hold jobs, have iPhones, drive cars, eat food – but live in squalor, rent-free in their deceased grandmother’s house in the ghetto with a rabbit they starved to death, decomposing in a cage next to their dining room. They can’t be bothered with disposing of the carcass because they can’t get to that side of the room without stepping in both fresh and old, ashen piles of dog shit. This is the kind that will punch a three-year-old in the stomach for yanking a bit too hard on the house-shitting dog's ears, and then misjudge him for inarticulate and unable to tell his parents. This is the same kind that will walk down the same hall every day, where a cockroach goes overlooked on the wall, now a fixture with one half of it’s body remaining intact, the other crushed from the middle down, it’s innards streaked and dried yellow on the crow’s foot texture. An occasional comrade lays belly-up down this same hall, cocooned in dust bunnies.

But this person goes to work. And works with children, preferring small children, you know four years old and under, who can be bribed, manipulated and don’t get too mouthy. This kind of lunatic is uneducated, dropped out of school because, well – she was fat. High school is undoubtedly hard on four hundred pound, acne pocked girls. But there’s a difference between uneducated and unintelligent – and this person is not the latter. She is wicked smart, even if also a habitual drug user with a rap sheet. She obsesses over other’s children in a Hand That Rocks the Cradle kind of way. She has a sick and skewed (Freudian, even) perception of what a relationship between brother and sisters in their thirties should look like. She often says things like “my love knows no bounds,” which translates to mean that she herself knows no boundaries and will refuse to respect or acknowledge those of others. This type constantly intervenes in other people’s lives and relationships, perched on a lean-to soap box about how to live and how to be, how to raise children, judging all around her, condemning anyone who sticks around long enough. Yet she lives in the squalor, is unable to be self-sufficient, is single and friendless, save for the revolving door of sub-humans that’ll stick around only to smoke free from her sack, or commune in their mutual rejected sorry-ness, or the virtual internet relationships she’s been able to create through trickery, false braggadocio plus some creative Photoshopping. Aside from her parents (who are obligated, bless them,) everyone else has gone. Left… running and screaming away.

This is the type that most alarms me. This is also the type I find most flinching – the kind that uses their diagnosis (which changes, depending on what it is they want at the moment) as justification for their irrational actions, for their verbally violent and physically threatening meltdowns inspired by anything including something so little as a scheduling snafu. This is the type that is still whispered about among family… my family.

This is the sort of all-affecting, out of control, then lucid, then threatening then self-proclaimed near-prophet who everyone, for as long as I can remember, has danced around. Been at the mercy of. Tiptoed. Endured all kinds of shocking, unacceptable behavior from because… well, she’s crazy. She can’t help it, they say. And as family, we’re all supposed to just keep on taking it, keep on being the subject of her tirades, her obsession, then alternately take her libel and slander on the chin, because… well, first, it’s family and second – she’s not accountable for her actions, they say. Third, it’s really all only because well… she just loves us. She just wants attention. And the worst reason of all is yet another topic addressed here previously in my post on suicide – it’s her constant threat (and past failed half hearted attempts) that if she is not allowed the access she craves, to my husband, to my children – if she is not told what she wants to hear, is not allowed to “be herself,” then she. Just. Might.

And all the puppets dance.

I only half believe any of that. I believe this person, and her exclusive brand of crazy, chooses which of her actions to blame on her “illness,” which as mentioned is sometimes only clinical depression, or other times it’s manic depressive, or still yet, bi-polar or, or, or – just depends on the day, her offense and who you’ve talked to. I believe that the biggest part of the ever-changing illness is the also above mentioned lack of character, scape-goating cowardice and ultimate fraud. I am unsure whether or not she ever will complete the suicide, since she is one of those who seemingly enjoys such a love affair with her pain. Wallowing in it. Perpetuating it. Creating it. This is not me wishing it on her, nor goading her to it – but rather an honest explanation of what we’ve endured. The eggshells we used to walk on, before our family unit was threatened. I know in my bones that this is the kind of crazy that winds up being Friday night’s featured Dateline story, with Keith Morrison narrating the sordid details.

So, what do you do? How much compassion is enough? How much should be endured because of the sometimes cuckolding word “family?” Here’s what my husband and I did after years of it, negotiations over it, prayer about it: we went radio silent.

We did not (do not) attend events where we knew we’d have to deal with her. We’ve shunned her, officially, for more than a year now. We’ve ignored her texts, where once again, at pivotal moments in our lives, she makes effort to turn the focus to her – when we got married, when we were pregnant with our son (“How dare you consider naming that child after your mother!” –ensue family brawl over name choice…) when we were packing down ten years of our lives on a tight timeline and moving (insert looney’s insistence that we stop everything to discuss her feelings about our move – that we were taking “her” boy away from her. Mind you, we moved twenty six minutes away.) Then the day we had a sonogram and were told our baby Bird had a hole in her heart and ps – that kind of hole was a marker for Downs syndrome (insert berating texts from looney.)

It never mattered what was happening in real-time life with us, it only mattered that we all stop while she held us captive to tell us how she felt (read: raged, sobbed, foamed at the mouth) about our life decisions, and her insistence that she be considered and weighed heavily in each and every single one.

And that’s just a sampling of this kind of crazy’s milder episodes and behavior. That doesn’t include the stalking since, the lies she’s spread about myself and my husband, the threats to kidnap our children and the many other terroristic things we’ve been forced to notify both authorities and our attorneys about.

So, silence. Distance. And to that side of the family (save for two) – we are the bad guys. We’ve hurt their feelings. Family card night just isn’t the same. She can’t help it – they say. She’s lucid now, she’s not currently in a downward spiral, it’s safe now, they say.

These same sayers have told us, after particularly violent episodes inspired by something so benign as laundry that they too, have feared for their personal safety in her presence. “But, it’s family!”

I’ve come to discover that there are certain things that only a mother’s love can endure, and I ain’t her mama. And I’m no Glenn Close, either. Though, I’ll give to her foundation for posterity.

I know this might seem insensitive, harsh even. But when an entire tribe of people have been at the mercy, and my specific pod of people the focus of all the above, it tends to wear the compassion and understanding thin, it diminishes any pity that might have existed before, before, before – and it forces alienation, fortification of security and protection and since - the subsequent sweet, divine tranquility of normalcy and quiet. Even though she lurks. She’s always lurking.

So why am I blogging about it? Not to air dirty laundry, truly – that's not my style. She has been an embarrassment for the whole of my husband’s life. We are ashamed to claim any connection or relation to her whatsoever. Am I writing to increase our watchers (of which we have many, thankfully)? Maybe. But also to gain insight. Do comment on this. Do give feedback. Do tell me that we’re not the only ones who have the genetic (or legal, as it were, for me specifically) misfortune of being linked to a raving, bat-shit crazy, ticking time bomb. Secondly, I’m writing about it because in the world of gross-connectivity and over-sharing – we have mutual friends on Facebook with her, where she addresses my children in status updates, where she slanders my husband’s good name in posts. I just want to set the record straight for my old favorite government teacher who is one of those mutuals, in case you were wondering, sir. And lastly - because just as she stalks us in real life (we have eyes everywhere, our house sees everything, Rw is “big brother” only in the most technical of terms…) she’s one of the ones I mentioned in my very first post here – the one who will come for stalking and fodder.

Here it is, Tar-baby – we see you. We know. And now, so does everyone else. 

If you so happen to see a drug commercial that might cure you of all that - for the love of God, fucking take it.

And that, well… I just couldn’t help. Sanity made me do it.

To learn more about lunatics, crazy people, blame-shifters, emotional muggers or the people who do truly suffer from mental illness instead of just poor choices, click here: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml

Sum-motherin'

Sun up to sun down. All day, every day. In the middle of most nights, sometimes several times. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and two snacks, sometimes more – only rarely if ever from a box, a drive-through or processed. Never microwaved. Dressing, changing, cleaning up. Spaghetti stuck in belly buttons. Three sets of teeth, three toothbrushes, three different kinds of toothpaste. One set finger-scrubbed. Guiding, inspiring, protecting, letting go, giving in, nursing, weaning, taking back, teaching, disciplining.

Planning, crafting, creating, play-dough. Accidents, chores, delegation of duties. Golden foil stars. Charts. Praise. Admonishment. Kindness. Church, state and country. Fostering whimsy, telling age appropriate truths, leading by example, planting, pruning, pinching, watering. Listening. Observing. Realizing. Making time to shower. Respecting the gap. Apologies. Teaching responsibility. Ongoing conversations about The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit and Mother Nature – and how they all know each other, wondering if they share dessert or fight about whether or not to allow twisters to touch down. Little jealousies. Owning choices. I love you. Honoring, acknowledging.

Mud-pies, sore chlorine eyes. Swimming, diving, correcting stroke, dolphin kicking, Marco Polo-ing, catching breath. Talking under water. Sunscreen - two kinds. Work. Write. Hush, sit-sit, be still. Outside voices inside. Reading. Second chances. Writing. A full costume closet, a world of props and every room a stage. Explaining, describing. Popcorn balls, options, marshmallow-skewers-turned-swords, made-up songs. Instructions. Knowing my son sticks his head in to the hamper to say words he’s not suppose to say. Understanding. Remembering doing the same at his age, only into my closet. “Shit. Damn. Son of a bitch.”

Divided time, mutual attention, equality and fairness. Sharing, greed, hunger vs. boredom. Priorities. If you can’t see me, I can’t see you. Don’t say butt knuckle. Holding hands, skipping, racing, tagging. Baby weight. What happened to my boobs? Hips do spread. Skinned knees, band aids, popsicles. A thousand hugs. Patience.

Booster seats and five-point-harnesses. Decisions that decide the way the cards will fall. Confidence. Lifting, toting. Acceptance. Sippy cups. You just wait ‘till your Daddy gets home! Spills. Tooth Fairy. Two million kisses. Work. Negotiations and love songs. Assembly. Eat your spinach! Forgiveness. Leggo skyscrapers, Dr. Seuss, dioramas, Sprout online, Mario and Ditty.

Making words, listening for words, recognizing words. Reading between the lines. Vigilance. Awareness. Prayers silent and aloud, and tonight – while Giddian blessed our meal, in the most sincere and preacher-like description of why he’s blessed, even though “Dear God, there’s these disgusting, nasty brussell sprouts on my plate” -  Bird folded her tiny hands… and we’ve never once suggested it, prompted or demonstrated how, other than just doing so ourselves without real consideration that she was watching. She clapped when he was finished.

Sitting silent near to midnight just looking at my husband looking back at me, because it’s quiet and it’s just us.

String together those little moments, and it’s just a summer day. It’s validation. Even when it’s hard-won and exhausting… it’s the exciting and terrifying and simple yet complicated and carefully navigated waters of parenthood. That's a Thursday in the Land of Motherhood. A good, good Thursday.

Blithering Blathers & Nattering Niggles

Oh, no.

I’ve got so many words to spill it’s as though they’ve bottle-necked in my throat. And something’s coming. I can almost taste it.

Up until Sunday night, I’d been relatively quiet for days. When I say this, it will seem like a lot, considering I just said “quiet” – but truly, in the grand scheme of encounters a typical person might have in a week's time, I repeat, I’ve been quiet.

I’ve spoken to Rw, my children, my parents, my sisters and my beloved Alexis. No one else. Not even Habib at the Quick Stop, who normally asks after everything from my miles-per-gallon to my take on the Obama administration. “Do you like him, Democrat?” I wouldn’t engage, backing out the door with a tight-lipped grin. 

I’ve dodged the chatty mothers at my son’s school, certain I’ll say something to the effect of “I could give a shit if your washer is broken and no, I don’t drive to damn Oklahoma for bargain flip-flops, bless you and the time on your hands! Yeah, stop looking at my eyebrows, I haven’t had time and P.S – You’re too old for fucking skinny jeans and why the hell are you wearing a bedazzled trucker hat at 9:00am… or, ever?” I won’t mean a bit of it ugly, truly. I’d likely even say it sweetly. But, well… then.

See, I’ve been quiet because I have something to say, to spew, to preach but it’s of the untellable nature. It cannot pass my lips. I cannot give wind to the words because who knows whose ears they might fall upon?

Plus, I don’t know what it is.

Then that thing I keep tasting, it’s got me frantically clicking Send and Receive in the toolbar of my email. Refreshing my phone. Checking my post box. But here’s the thing: I don’t know what it is I’m expecting to arrive at any of these various points of contact, or what exactly, specifically, pin-pointed and directly – it is that I need to say. So to a degree, I fear it. Does bad news cometh? Or am I simply waiting for the right person to ask the right question?

Or maybe it’s just the writer’s version of Spring Fever and I need to simply pick up the pen… and bloom.

It was confirmed last night that it is indeed the remaining edits and revisions to my book that still loom large, that I’ve been putting off by any way possible. Plastering walls, digging and planting vegetable beds big enough to feed a third world country, making “special boxes,” blogging (um, hi,) baking brick-hard cakes, organizing my goozillion photos… Creating elsewhere so as to avoid getting down to business. Because I hate revising. It’s painful. Like waxing the most tender of spots. Tugging one thread in Chapter 3 that might unravel a page (or more!) in Chapter 44. I’m certain in moments gray matter has leaked from my ears.

Then it’s the legion-sized group of folks that have walked with me, eyes on every word, thoughts throughout my pages, feedback, support and swift kicks in the ass who remind me that they’re all waiting. They have expectations. If it’s one thing I’m good at – it’s meeting expectations, if even only in the oddest (and tardiest) of ways.

And then I do this, spew it out – and I’m silly. It’s silly. These are such great problems to have, but it would be most Un-Jenny to do it without a bit of the vapors. Where’s my velvet settee to swoon upon, back of hand across forehead?

So yeah. I’m working on POV and making it ten times the bitch it really is. I sit with it and it’s just not so hard. Only involved to the degree of sitting slack-jawed and brow pinched in the glow of my screen for hours on end readjusting those threads. Puppet mastering. Dancing with my characters. All along it’s been them, the characters, nagging at me, waiting for my attention. A dear friend and incredible author, Suzanne Frank, said it best – it’s surgical. And it is.

In other news here are some words for you to chew on, adopt into your vocabulary and use: cede, nascent, engender, papist, catapult, ire, legion, cat-nipped, recalcitrance, beetle, snatch, acrimony, salted, caustic, flam-diggory, rancorous, persnickety, consonant, puckered and filmy. Talk amongst yourselves. I’ve got work to do. Expect it.