sticks and stones

when i was a kid, my dad used to try to bolster us when we got teased by doing that "sticks and stones" rhyme. i was never sure it did much until today at lunch, when someone at my lunch table mentioned that i seem to have a propensity for taking a lot of shit.

was it part of my upbringing, this acceptance of the crap life dishes? unquestioning i roll through time.

it's been a while since i blogged. quite a while. there's been vacation--which was spent at home, in fear of spreading and/or contracting the dreaded Crud that dan and eero had--and going to a wedding with nathan--which was SO much fun that i danced until my feet were too swollen to put back in my pointy toed shoes, and also at which i met a kindred spirit in the guise of a college friend's straight date, which is what i was as nathan's date...then there was a duran duran concert, lots of fun and thank you sara for inviting me, and a trip home over easter, which wasn't long because the night prior was spent up WAY too late gaming, and then i slept most of saturday before even dragging myself to check on my sister's cat and drive to st cloud.

when i arrived, mom and dad were sick. dad was insistent, despite mom's protests, that he drive down and pick up my grandma. i went out on saturday night with my sister--kind of a celebration of my bday and hers all at once--and played trivia and then bowled. yes, bowled. what a new and novel experience...and i did good! my high score was a 96, which is unheard of for a whalen child. my parents are excellent bowlers; we just apparently didn't ever excel in that area. but maybe with age... *sigh* sunday dad got grandma and david and beth and i took her to church, which was uneventful. then home, dinner, and a brief rest and then grandma was ready to go back to anoka. she seemed to know who i was for most of the drive but then when we got to her assisted living building couldn't remember where to go. found her room and as we're walking out, i comment on the shamrock shaped clock hanging next to her door.

kim: that's an interesting clock.
grandma w: my husband made that clock for me, years ago.
kim: he was a very creative man. (insert fond memories of grandpa w here)
grandma w: yes, he was very creative, but i had to have all the children.

oy.

last week was a rough week. got back from vacation to discover that barry, one of my coworkers, had decamped. then on monday heard about the shootings at red lake, which is about 20 miles north of bemidji. we had some panic as eero thought his cousin still taught there, and then couldn't get through to his parents, but it was abated when he found that she worked close but not there. still nothing short of awful. i just cannot get over the amount of violence that goes on in the world today. maybe i was just ignorant as a child? how blissful it must have been.

i'm reading a variety of books again, too. one romance novel, and then Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes, Damned if you Don't by Graham Houghton, and my old standby, Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg, which is right up there with being one of my all time favorite reads EVER. so far i'm liking the mayes book but the damned if you do book is interesting but not grabbing me quite yet. and i'm just not getting into the karen hawkins romance, either. so back to smilla. there's a line in there i love, about how adults assume that children are open like books, but in all reality they're the most secretive people on the planet. how true. i think about red lake, and how even the people who thought they knew this boy, how they really did not.

i think about myself as a child. what secrets did i keep, what things did i hold close? i don't remember, not any more. something that i've always carried are stones. every box i've ever opened from childhood has at least one rubbermaid container of rocks--agates, smooth black stones, rough sparkly granite. i always had rocks in my pocket, whatever i could find that looked interesting. in fact, i still have all kinds of rocks.

rocks remind me that life continues. that i don't have to give in. that i am of the earth, and that the earth is of me. whenever life gets really "bad" and i have to find some way to ground myself, i find a rock that's unweildy and really too big for my pocket, and i stick it in my pocket anyway. whenever i bump up against it, i'm reminded that i am such a small force in the world, and that this rock, this little and somewhat forgotten peice of earth, will continue long after i am ashes spread to wind.

kind of a meditation and reflection, for me.

all the things that have gone on in the time between this sentence and the last time i journaled, they're small things. insignificant, in the stream of time. the shooting--now that was a wake up call. but still just a larger rock in a larger river. connected to me but disconnected. i have not carried a rock in my pocket for a long time, perhaps over a month or probably more. i thought about that today at lunch, hearing the light in which others view me, the person who takes a lot of shit and just puts up with it. perhaps that's why i like my rocks--they're my metaphor for living, a little note from the universe about how insignificant i feel on the planet.

sticks and stones
may break my bones
but words
words save me
from the damnation
of silence
i write i speak i hum
to keep at bay
the dogs of war
the ravens that follow
pick my bones
to sticks
and stones.