Tapestry of the Mundane

   This past week has been a kind of tapestry of the mundane.  Life just keeps coming at me and for some reason I am keenly aware of it.  It's not a bad thing at all--it's just that sometimes it seems as though things come at you from all directions and none of them are huge or profound, but you just kind of get hit.
   Last weekend my husband and I visited another church where he preached, we met these lovely people, had a good meal and then drove home.  I marveled at how small our world is in the faith community.  Someone comes in for a short visit and there appears to be an almost instant connection, and then you or they are gone. 
   On Monday the work week began and I get involved in the messiness of other peoples' lives.  I watch a relationship fall apart, hear about past wounds that keep getting opened by others or by their own actions, see faces change when they first come into my office and then something is said and the anger or rage is visceral; it's like they become another person.  I hear of addiction, abuse, infidelity, loneliness, fear.  The reward comes when someone says yes to really working on healing, of allowing me to come along side them and work towards the hope that brought them in in the first place. 
   Earlier on in the week I had a diagnostic mammogram and was told I had to have a biopsy.  Normally I would've been completely unglued inside.  Instead I had a peace about all of it.  With my rather odd and somewhat extensive medical history, I cannot remember how many times there has been a seeming reason to fear and then it's either nothing or something to watch that really is just a nuisance. 
   I am interurrupted of my subconscious  anxiety about it nonetheless when my eldest daughter and I have an argument over skype 6000 miles apart from each other.  She asks with tears in her eyes, "Why do you do this?  Why are you picking a fight with me across the world?"  I am momentarily stung by the rebuke but then I remind myself silently that that is not what I did, but since it is her perspective I have to repair that.  I apologize, she says she has to go, I write her an email, she responds and all is well.  But you see, she is even farther away this weekend on an expedition and I long to make sure she really is OK.  I offer up a prayer and hope for the best.
   I go in for the biopsy yesterday and remember the familiar "pop" when a sample is taken.  The memory leaves me momentarily queasy.  A botched bone marrow biospy with my sister holding my hand, nearly faint as she empathically registers my pain and fear.  But thankfully, this time it wasn't so bad and an ultrasound tech, Donna, holds my hand.  My husband drives me to work and I watch another relationship teeter on demise--but she heroically hangs on and agrees to do some serious trauma work.  Good for her, I think to myself.  Afterward I go home, watch a little TV with my husband and an ice-pack, our youngest daughter leaves to babysit and we go to the mall and browse.  We come home and watch a movie (Red Eye. It was OK).
   This morning I woke up to my dog Max wagging his tail, sneezing on me as he tries to lift the covers off my face.  I love when he does this though am puzzled that he seems to get excited and sneeze just on me.  Why not the rest of the family?
   And so this is it.  The mundane of life, the passing of hours and days and years.  As my husband says, "it's a beautiful thing."

It's official: I'm my mother.

   For the last nineteen years I have seen her creeping in my psyche.  It started out small and more universal, like making my kids eat their vegetables and wash their hands before dinner.  Then, it progressed to sayings.  My favorite was "You made your bed now you lie in it."  Back then, I was like, what??   And don't get me started on how many sayings she messed up ("A bird in the hand is worth a penny saved!") to which my siblings and I would laugh and call her a "foreigner."  The irony here is that I am not a foreigner, but I too mess up expressions and my husband smiles and says, "Ok, Cecilia" (my mother's name).
  My mother used to get so mad at was me gossiping on the phone.  She would initially walk by and give me a knowing look, a cross between a smirk and a scowl.  It would bug me to no end because I thought she was budding into my business (I'm middle-aged remember--no cell phones then and less privacy).  Part of me thought she was being curious but then the admonition would come to either quit gossiping or get off the phone.  Like, what nerve!  Fast forward and I have told my daughters the same thing.  If you are talking about someone behind their back to someone else, rest assured they are doing the same thing behind yours.
   I remember her driving us to school if it rained.  We usually walked but if it rained, we got to be chauffered.  Trust me, we would've rather gotten wet because she would drive us in her pajamas, housecoat and slippers and we would slink back in the car.  We would plead with her to drop us off at the driveway to the school, but no, she insisted on dropping us off right in front of the commons filled with hundreds of cooler kids.  I confess, I am cooler than she was but I too have driven my kids to school in my pj's.
   Then she got bigger than just a part of my psyche.  Take tonight for example.  A bunch of kids at my house (for Bible study no less) and all is well.  I'm doing my thing downstairs, watching "House" and minding my own business.  The Bible study ends, the kids are leaving and all of a sudden I hear the deep "boom-boom" of rap music blaring outside my suburban window.  I take a deep breath.  Not my cup of tea (see, she is so in my psyche) but I can deal with it.  But then I hear tires screeching and the music blaring and the tires screeching again and I've had it!  I march myself out of my house, walk past the other kids who are looking at me as if I'm wearing polyester and I tell those boys to knock it off and go home as I watch a few neighbors coming out of their homes looking at us like we're in the middle of a gang war. To my daughter's credit, she only once told me that she would handle it as I walked across the street to the cars with the "boom-boom" bass and the burnt rubber.  She didn't say a thing afterward as I told her that I am sure she was embarrassed but they were being very disrespectful and rude.  And as I walked into my front door, it was official.  I am now my mother.  Without the polyester.