Keeping it real - or how sometimes all you can do is laugh at yourself!

Harper is now old enough for middle school youth group at church. Holy smokes! It feels like yesterday I was in middle school youth group.  No, really, it does feel like yesterday.  Well, Wednesday was two days ago, to be technical.

Wednesday was Harper’s first time at Wildfire, our church’s middle school group, so I wanted to go inside to pick her up.  I’m standing looking at a wall of brochures about church activities with my back to the handful of other parents inside.  I’m thinking about how I would love to volunteer for Meals on Wheels, and how I wish I had time to do a women’s group- you know, grown up thoughts.  Then a woman I’ve never seen before comes up to me and says quietly, “Mam, I don’t want to embarrass you, but your skirt is tucked in your underwear.”  WTH?  (I didn’t curse in church, but I wouldn’t put it past me). I said, “Oh my God, thank you!”  I am sure I must have turned a deep shade of crimson.  What is a girl to do when someone tells you your junk is hanging out IN church?  Well, I quickly pulled my skirt out of my underwear, which were hot pink by the way, and then just stood there, with what I can only imagine was a cross between a deer in the headlights look and a “I’m going to play this cool” look, until Harper came out 5 minutes later.  She and I laughed about it on the way to the car.  I wondered how many of the people in the cars lined up outside had seen my own personal freak show.  Hopefully there were all too busy looking at their phones and didn’t notice the crazy lady walking into church.  When I texted a friend my tale of woe, she said she can’t help but giggle and that I should be proud my undies were hot pink.  True dat!  It would have been much worse if I had been wearing my granny panties, God forbid.   

 I never knew that having a daughter in middle school would bring back all my middle school insecurities.  Fortunately for Harper, she is confident, has a posse already, and is coming home happy every day.  She isn’t at all like the hot mess I was in middle school, and apparently still am.

I asked Harper if she wants me to come in next time when I pick her up or wait for her in the car. She told me to come in, if I’m not wearing a skirt.  That girl is going to be just fine.  It’s me we may need to work on!

Happy Friday y’all!

            Love,

            Rebecca

No one else can play your part

            At breakfast the other day we read a devotional that included Jesus reminding us what a good and loving friend he is.  Hannah read it out loud, and then said, “He sure is bragging.”  Harper said, “Um, someone needs to go to church.”  I was thinking to myself, “Please can I finish my coffee before having a theological discussion with my 9 year old.”  That girl keeps me on my toes.      

One of Hannah’s first homework assignments this past week was to fill out a questionnaire about her.  She was asked to describe what she does well.  The teacher even wrote in italics, “Go ahead and brag.” Hannah did not want to answer that question.  I pushed her a little bit and she said, “No, I can’t write anything that sounds braggy.”  I then tried to explain the difference of bragging and believing in herself.   I asked her to come up with 4 things by the end of the week that she does well.  Hannah was not happy about the prospect of saying 4 good things about herself.  However, she eventually came around and wrote that she is a good baker, a good artist, a good biker, and a good writer.  When I added things like loving or kind or thoughtful, she balked.  It was easier for her to write about things she does well than good things about who she is.  Sometimes she is too much like her mother. Sigh.

            This made me think about how difficult it is for me, also, to think about, write, or say what is good about me.  Maybe it is the same for you? I support an organization called To Write Love on Her Arms

, which is devoted to helping people struggling with suicide, depression and addiction. This week is National Suicide Prevention week.  As part of their campaign, TWLOHA, has a packet that I purchased that includes the t-shirt I’m wearing, a print with the same design, and a piece of paper with the words, No one else can play my part because…The idea is to fill it out and share it to support the idea that every one of us has a sacred part to play.  I keep trying to write something but nothing feels right.  One of my core beliefs is that everyone has value and is significant, but to actually put into words why I am is difficult, almost anathema. 

            I’m not sure where my strong distaste for bragging comes from.  My family has a healthy self-regard.   I think it may lurk somewhere in my religious past.  When I was seeing a counselor he would ask me to look him in the eye and tell him the positive things people had said to me in the last week, or say out loud good things about myself.  I wanted to mumble it and look the other way.  No one likes a bragger, for sure.  I prefer to be self-deprecating and tell jokes at my expense.  However, the exercise of weekly telling my former therapist good things about myself or positive things people said about me helped me start to believe it.   Once he even gave me an assignment to tell my best friend something positive someone had said about me.  I was horrified.  Why would I want to tell her that?  Surely, she would think I was bragging.  I told her the assignment reluctantly, saying it made no sense. She said it made perfect sense to her.  He knew she already knew the positive thing said about me and by telling her it would help me believe it.  It felt like the two of them were conspiring together, but of course they weren’t.  Health was conspiring! 

            So here goes, No one else can play my part because I’m a whacky blend of sweet and spicy, reverent and profane, complicated and simple, confident and insecure, nice girl and wanna-be bad ass.  I love tattoos and tea parties.  I’m a mother to my two daughters and a wife and friend to my husband.  I’m a mental health counselor and I’ve been in mental health counseling.  I’m a believer in hope when all feels hopeless, in light when the darkness feels overpowering, in beauty amidst the messiness and chaos of life.  I am grateful for my unique story, for who I am, for who I love and for who loves me. 

            Now it’s your turn.   No one else can play your part because…

Call Me Maybe

     I often hear people say to me, “I always look forward to seeing what you are going to be wearing next.” Or this one: “You can pull that off.” I always wonder what I’m pulling off.   I guess you can say I have a style that is all my own.  From time to time I will be posting outfits that are uniquely me.  I’m not afraid of fashion, but embrace it as a way of expressing myself.  You will rarely find me wearing solids.  I tend toward the whimisical: woodland creatures, cats and dogs, vintage mopeds, vintage typewriters, vintage cars, and hearts are just a few things that I wear on sweaters and dresses and bows.  I love retro inspired clothing, especially from the 20s, 40s, 50s and 60s.  I don’t believe in dressing for your age but in dressing in what you love and what suits your personality as well as your body type.

     I sometimes will find one item-shoe, necklace, tights, etc.- and build an outfit around it.  Today’s outfit was no exception.  The vintage phone dress is from Modcloth, one of my favorite women’s online clothing stores.  If I want whimsy or vintage or animal or a conversation piece, the first place I go is Modcloth.  I love the vintage phone theme of this dress.  (Yes, many of my outfits have themes).  Once I ordered it, my BFF and fashion consultant, Corie, recommended a necklace that says hello to compliment it.  That idea appealed to my love of whimsy:  I ran with it, finding a “hey y’all” necklace in an Etsy shop that perfectly captures my favorite Southern greeting.  Hey y’all is definitely how I say hello.  The sandals are several seasons ago from Macys.  I love pink shoes, obviously, and the black bow sealed the deal.  The hair bow is from Claire’s, my daughter’s favorite store, and a handy place to get hair accessories regardless of your age.  Call me maybe.  That’s today’s theme.   For me dressing is playful, and maybe there is some art to it, too.  Yeah, I will go with that.  

First Day of Middle School, or how I am learning to embrace my imperfections.

            My first day of middle school in 1980 went something like this.  My mom pulled up to Jackson Prep in her station wagon, and I got out of the car with a stack full of text books and notebooks in my arms.  (Where was my backpack, I now wonder?) I dropped every book on the sidewalk and turned crimson red as I heard someone say, bless her heart, a phrase that carries many meanings in the South, none of them any good.  For an 11 year old, this felt mortifying and I remember it all of these many, many years later. 

Of course, I wanted something different for Harper on her first day of middle school.  We spent time shopping for the perfect outfit and shoes, tried different hair styles the weekend before, packed a healthy lunch and snack, including a hand written love note.  I made a map for her of her classes, so she would not get lost. I even let her talk me into her wearing a little mascara and a little lipstick.  We were both filled with excitement.  I didn’t sleep at all.  She woke up before six o’clock ready to go.  So far, so good.  We pulled up to her new school and she said, “Where do I go?” My heart sank as I realized that we remembered everything except for that map with her schedule on it.  Her big huge smile turned into tears.  I felt like the worst mom of the year.  Again.   I found a very nice counselor who told Harper she will print out a new schedule for her.  Harper barely looked at me as she walked away into this new world.  Sigh. 

            I hope when she remembers her first day of middle school 20 years from now the first thing that comes to her mind is not the missing schedule and the tears.   I hope she remembers making a new friend and picking a favorite teacher and feeling a little grown up.  I wanted it to be perfect, but I’m reminded that there is no perfect, certainly not in our household.  I’m pretty sure she recovered quickly.  She often surprises me with her maturity.  She is not attending our neighborhood school, but chose an arts magnet school, where we know hardly anyone.  I was lamenting that sad fact last week, when she said this, “Mom, I will make new friends and you will make friends with their moms.”  Wise girl.  Imperfection and disappointments help us become wise.  Here is to being perfectly imperfect!

Update: Harper texted me to let me know she was on the bus home and that she had a great day.  When she got off the bus her bright smile made my heart melt.  I apologized for forgetting her scheduled and map, to which she shrugged and said, “I found everything just fine.”  It was just a blip in her day, not what she remembers most.  I think there is a lesson or two in here for me. 

            Both my girls had imperfect days.  Hannah came home happy and excited about her new teacher, but quickly asked me why I forgot all of her supplies.  What the what? I had them all neatly organized in a Target bag ready to go.  She told me this morning she had everything in her backpack.  Well, in my anxious haste to get Harper squared away at her school, I did not double check the bag.  I even took Hannah to school and stayed 15 minutes in her classroom, confident that this was one part of my morning that went perfectly.  Nope, perfection continues to elude me. One of the blogs that I follow, Redemption Pictures, has a t-shirt for sale that says, "I don’t have my shit together."  Yes! That! I’m 0 for 2 today, but the girls are still smiling.  Now I just need to remember to smile, and most importantly, breathe.   

Mississippi girl in an Oregon World

                         I am a Mississippi girl living in an Oregon world.  Just ask Facebook.  Recently, on my Facebook news feed there was an advertisement designed especially for me: a t shirt with the words Mississippi girl in an Oregon world. I guess nothing gets past Facebook. 

I live in Portland, Oregon where the motto is Keep Portland Weird. I was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, where my family there scratches their head at a city that actually wants to be weird. Say what? Oregon and Mississippi share some things in common: friendly people, natural beauty, and good food; but they are really so dissimilar they may as well both be from another planet.  One is the most religious state in the US and the other is one of the least religious.  One is casual and anything goes and the other is formal dressing and fancy manners.  One is blue and the other is red.  I could go on, but you get the picture.

2013 marked the year that I have officially lived longer outside of Mississippi than I did in it, which means two things: I'm really getting old, and my accent is really only detectable after drinking a glass or two of wine, or when I am cheering on the Ole Miss Rebels during football season-nothing like a little Hotty Toddy to bring out my Southern roots.  For those of you who are now lost, Hotty Toddy is an Ole Miss cheer/greeting that goes like this:

Are you ready?

Hell yeah! Damn right!

Hotty Toddy! Gosh Almighty!

Who the hell are we? Hey!

Flim Flam, Bim Bam!

Ole Miss, by Damn!

We teach our children to say it is as soon as they can talk.  My parents taught us to say “Who the heck are we” and “Ole Miss by George” until we were old enough to say Hell and Damn, which I’m pretty sure is when we actually went to Ole Miss as Freshmen.  And no one ever says God Almighty.  Duh.

My accent may not be as thick as it used to be but I still say y’all, all y’all, fixing and might could and might would.  Sadly, I stopped calling all soft drinks Coke a while ago and refer to it as soda, to which my grandmother always promptly asked in confusion, “Baking soda?”  My mom does not like that my daughters call Coke, Sprite, Fanta, etc. soda, but what is an Oregon mom to do?  Oh, I know the answer to that question, not give her daughters soda at all, but that is a whole ‘nother story. 

My parents really dislike my daughters saying yes, no, and the worst, yeah.  I’m a grown woman and I still say yes mam, no mam, and yes sir and no sir to my parents when I’m home in Mississippi.  It just doesn’t work up here in Oregon.  People kind of look at you funny and suspiciously, like you are being sassy, not respectful.  Hence, I never taught my girls to say it and they stick out like sore thumbs when in Mississippi. They don’t say mam and sir, they don’t wear bows bigger than their heads in their hair, and worst of all, they don’t say y’all.  That was actually hard for me to type.  How is it my two daughters don’t say y’all?  It almost makes me feel like I’ve failed as a parent.  However, they do love sweet tea and Chick Fila, so maybe there is still hope!

I moved away when I was 21, spent a decade in the Mid-West, which never felt like home, and have now settled in the Pacific Northwest.  It is far away from my family in Mississippi and the South that I love, but I’ve grown to love it here, too.  I’m not a Keep Portland Weird kind of person, I do live in the suburbs after all.  However, the weirdness here resonates with me because I always felt different and a little weird growing up in Mississippi.  I was into books, not sports.  I was socially awkward in school, overweight and unsure of myself.  I was a late bloomer, and never really blossomed until I moved away, which I attribute more to age than geography. 

Here is the story of my life: I never fit in 100% in Mississippi and I don’t fit in 100% in Oregon.  One of the beautiful things about life in my 40s is that I’ve made peace with that.  I will always be overdressed, over friendly, and just over the top in general in Portland.  I will always be too liberal, too irreverent, and too much like a Yankee, in Mississippi.  I’m too much or not enough.  Yes, I’m a Mississippi girl in an Oregon world.  I’m both/and, and I really like it that way, except for when I don’t, but I’ll save that for another day.