Dave, my blue hat & I

Before I start I may need to change the music. Eli says, “Did she really just say football?” followed with a, “This music scares me,” as we listen to the end of the song Red Football from the album Universal Mother. Sometimes I like Sinead; sometimes, like years at a time, I don’t.

“Yes Eli, they did say football and yes, the song is scaring me too.”

I forward to the next song, Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes. Please deep bass beat, please pump some energy back into me. Eli leaves the room. He needs to read. I need to write. Even an hour ago I was full of energy. Instead of writing, Dave and I ran errands: Starbucks, World Market & Jans Sporting Goods, all slowly sucking the life out of me. I had so much to say. Most of which I said to Dave, and to which he responded, “Yep.” Today I spent the day with four lovely women and I was feeling really inspired. And right now, well, I can hardly keep my eyes open — literally.

The Day I met Robin. July 31, 2006

We all met in different ways. I met Mary a long time ago through my brother, Bill. Robin and I met through Julie. Julie met me through my blog. Carrie and I met through Robin. And at approximately 11:00AM this morning I met Suzanne.  We have been planning this meeting for some time and today we all met at Carrie’s. Carrie had a lovely spread and I brought the Veggie Pigs.

Bracelet Eli made because Carrie taught him how to crochet & gave him that green beed

We did what women often do when they get together. We talked about things we usually keep to ourselves. What I can tell you is that towards the end, as I was exclaiming some wondrous wisdom that I cannot remember, I aspirated a piece of Pistachio. Carrie walked into the kitchen to get me some fresh water. I followed her, noticing the beautiful daylight. “I could stand here forever! It is so warm and sunny.”

With water in hand and because the other women patiently waited for me to catch by breath, I walked back into the other room and tried to finish my not-all-that-important thought. Ladies, thank you for waiting.

Earlier, as I sat there desperately needed to pee, but not wanting to miss a word, I waited until I could wait no more. I noticed the adorable bathroom sign hanging on the door and made my way over. As soon as I shut the door, I noticed that Carrie and I used the same type of tile on our bathroom floors. I was unusually distracted with the grout. I kept looking at different areas of her floor and could not leave the bathroom until I was sure their grout color was the same as ours or not. I returned to the super stimulating conversation to find Robin conveying her thoughts by standing up, utilizing her entire body in a sort of a dance-dance-revolution sort of way. She did this more than once and it was brilliant. Mary told us about France. She just returned from living there in the land of bon soir and baguettes and I could not hear enough about it. Carrie’s husband, who was at work, made the muffins. Somewhere in some thread we all discovered that I “dated” Suzanne’s cousin. I say “dated” quite loosely because I was never really sure we were “dating” even when we were dating. We hung out a lot. We even held hands once or twice. He made me dinner and while we were “dating” I made out with his friend. Ah, the good old days.

About the time I met Mary. My brother Bill & Me

Not once, but several times I sensed there was a common thread tying us together. Even though we are all over the spectrum, each of us was raised Mormon. At one point Robin insightfully inserted, “Even if you leave the Church, Mormonism never leaves you.” I think she is right and I told her as much. It defines who we are, and how we see the world is filtered through our Mormon lens. We all attended Brigham Young University, and as I listened to everyone recount their BYU experience it was apparent that things like heavy petting are to a BYU student the same as having sex for a student attending another university. We all get it. Some of us married young. Some of us didn’t. For me, in the Mormon culture, once I was twenty-two I felt like an old maid, an unworthy vessel who had missed the marriage opportunity. I am just scratching the surface here. As Mormons, active or not, we have a short hand for these experiences. Often I think this shorthand lends itself to the Mormons-are-a-Cult perception of non-Mormons. With our The-Church-of-Jesus-Christ-of-Latter-Day-Saints shorthand, we can talk about things like being called into “BYU standards” and with a few phrases like, “do you have a beard card,”or “there were boys in your bedroom,” or “your skirt is above your knee,” we all get it. And even if we, ourselves, were never called into “BYU Standards,” we have heard stories and we all know the fear.

We can talk about things like prayer and faith and having our faith shattered and we know. We were all taught in various ways that if you pray hard enough, God will answer your prayers. If you are worthy and righteous, things will be ok. We know the helpless feeling of banging our prayerful heads against the wall and feeling like it is we, not Thee, who does not have enough Faith. Some of us have prayed so hard our heads have exploded. We then used our agency to piece our heads back together, often with our central beliefs forever changed. I do not believe anyone who will tell you otherwise. Because even those who no longer attend or no longer believe still feel the pull and this particular pull DOES filter how we view the world.

Now what to do with that. Well today I was able to let my hair down, be honest, not feel judged and not feel so alone. Today it felt like home, a home I cannot wait to go back to. Thank you ladies.

The conversation was so good that this was the only picture I managed to take

COMMENTS ARE CLOSED.  This is a touchy feely post and did not think the comments needed to be turned on. This being said, I DO have A LOT to say about my 80′s HAIR!

Pink Flower

I always like to describe my mid-twenties like this: I play the part of the bouncy ball. My world at the time is a dark room, a room that only has a few, hard-to-locate ways out and Life (my choices) plays the part of a hand that throws the bouncy ball into the dark room. Looking back, I think that the bouncy ball had way too much misguided bounce.  I blindly bounced  and bounced and bounced until somehow I was living with these girls in their garage. Seriously, I set up shop in their unused garage/cement-floor-covered storage room. My sister Dominique could tell you because she came to visit me there.  I still remember the look on her face as she said, “Beth, you are living in a garage?”

I dragged a mattress onto the rug I had found,  made up my  bed all snuggly, lit some candles, had my Sony Boombox/CD Player, and I believe I hung my clothes on one of those metal moveable clothing racks, the ones you see at the Laundromat. At the time, I had a pretty good job doing Marketing for large shipping company (you can probably guess which one) yet I always seemed short on cash. I even tried donating plasma a few times, until the day when I passed out with that giant plasma needle stuck in my arm and then promptly threw up upon waking. (That is another great story for anther day.)

As I think about this very awkward and stomach-in-knots time, I see things through my loosely-based-Zen Philosophy, which is that all of our actions and choices take us where we need to be (if we let them). Living on that garage floor was where my choices had taken me and I guess I needed to be there.

Prior to moving in, I knew one of my soon-to-be housemates.  She was the one who had invited me to live with her. She kept calling and kept pressing me to commit. “Beth, I found this place. We are signing the contract today! Are you in? Are you in?” And literally as I was packing my things to move in she called and said something like this, “Beth, I gave your space to “T.”  Her brother, “Q” is so cute and so cool. And he is friends with Dave and I like Dave.” (Thank God not my Dave.) “Really, really? What am I supposed to do?” “Beth, you have to understand. I like these boys and I want to get in with them. They are so cool. I want them to think I am cool,” was how the conversation went. “You selfish selfish person,” I thought and then asked some mutual friends what to do. “Beth, you know here. She means well. She has had it so rough.”  I threw her the sympathy card and because I also knew that I was stuck with my things in hand and was not ready to sleep on my mom’s couch, I suggested I sleep in the storage room/garage until I figured something else out.

Somehow  I committed to move in with her eventually committed to drive with her to San Francisco.  She needed to see her family (really some boys she liked) and she could not find anyone else to ride with her. I know. I know. Don’t say it. I was blind. We were all packed and I had the most terrible feeling as we were heading out the door. I had tried to back out several times, but I was weak. “I really don’t think I should go. I don’t feel right about it.” I said. “Beth, you can’t back out on me now. What will I do?” I should have backed out. I didn’t . I got in the car, buckled up and prayed. Hindsight tells me that many growing-up years later that now she and I both would have handled things differently  or at least that is what I like to think.  Like I said, I was young and weak.

San Francisco was crazy. I mean, crazy. I spent time with some of my own friends and then “my roommate” trotted me around to see all of these different boys, some I kind of knew from BYU. It was so weird.  After a few very awkward experiences, I realized that I was not comfortable as her sidekick so I called some other  friends and found other things to do. One of those things included hanging out with T’s brother, Q (T is the one who was given my room). Q was cool, normal and really nice. Sure, he partied, but who didn’t party in their 20s? Ok, yes, with my Mormon background no one partied ever, right? Wrong! Most of the folks I knew who partied the hardest were the Mormons, but because partying was so taboo, it was always on the down low. T’s brother, Q, was not on the down low and because I am pretty straightforward (don’t like secrets and don’t care for double lifestyles) it was much easier to hang with him. I asked Q if I could crash on his couch (he had a girlfriend and like I said he was just normal). So I crashed on his couch and “my roommate” picked me up the next morning.  We drove the fourteen hours back to Salt Lake City, fourteen hours of her trying to pump me for information. My mistake. I told her the truth. As I have gotten older I realize it is ok to say things like, “That is really none of your business,” or, “I am not comfortable talking about this.” Back then, I just gave in.

Finally back in the SLC, I walked into the house and before I could finish my thought to T, I hear “my roommate” on the phone and I hear her talking about me. “Did you know Q uses drugs? So does Beth (UM NO I DON’T & NO I DIDN’T. T is so upset about it and blah blah, exaggeration, lie, blah, lie, exaggeration, lie, blah, blah, blah.”  I walked right up to her. She smiled and looked at me, holding her finger up, “Just a minute. I am talking to Dave.” As if I would be proud of her succes too, she eventually hung up and started telling me how awesome Dave was and wouldn’t I think he was awesome too? Of course I asked her why she said what she said.  ”I like him and I was bored so I lied about you.”

What happened next you can call either a lucky bounce or a brilliant choice, I found the opening and I bounced my way out of that dark room. Best bounce ever!  I packed my things,  ditched the mattress, moved out of the garage, swallowed my pride and moved to my mom’s couch.  I never looked back. Shortly there after I began dating MY Dave. Had I not found my way out of that dark room, Dave would have never seen me. Our choices, even the really misguided ones, may be the kick in the pants we need to move forward.