I HAVE TWO DEAD BOYFRIENDS!!!

That's a hell of a title, but that's what came to me. Can't control truth burps!

Two very important loves in my life are dead. Social media told me so. 
I'm not new to people that I love dying. But most have been older than I am and 
there was some getting used to the idea.  My mom and dad died 10 days apart so
that was unique and poignant and very very funny. (That's for another burp)
I grieved proudly and formally for them. They deserved a little honoring grief.
And I have had three college friends die. Kind of weird and getting close to home.

But boyfriends aren't supposed to die. They just aren't. Nor age. Nor stop
loving me even if I stopped loving them first. It does help that I haven't seen a picture of them
since we were in love.  I have seen some photos of other boyfriends and was surprised to see 
they all looked like old men versions of themselves. I had to dig around in their faces for awhile to
get a glimmer of a Prom date. 

This reminds me that I had a moment  of relief to know that my two dear guys 
(one high school, one post divorce) would never see me and have to adjust their
idealized image of me to current reality. Vanity eventually gets humbled. Why hurry?
My eighty-three old husband still gets phone calls from former girl friends who he is shocked 
to realize are also eighty-three!!  

My high school love was a kind of torment. I was crazy about him. I have to admit I liked the Adrenalin of
deciding what to where each day and how to manage to walk by him at his locker at just the right time.
And dancing the last dance together. (Yes, it mattered. I feel sorry for any of you that haven't experienced the last dance and its meaning), We were off and on but never not connected from sixth grade through the first year in college. I ended it. I fell in love with the freedom of dating lots of guys with no anguish or love involved--just fun and dancing! New love every semester.

My post divorce guy was in the Peace Corp with me and my husband at the time. He heard I was divorced and called me and said, "At last, I can let you know I love  you."  It was nice to hear. He was fun and funny and generous and loved my kids and lived in Connecticut while I was living in Illinois.We sailed his boat and partied and had a few visits of  crazy in love times and one 600 dollar phone bill which was monumental then and I cried to the phone company and got them to accept 25 dollars a month.  Distance finally killed this love as I began to date back in Illinois where I lived. 

So RIP dear Jim and Billy Bell. I am right. Past loves aren't supposed to die and they don't.

TO BURP OR NOT TO BURP

I guess I could write this blog ahead of time. But I don't. It would betray the surprise for me about what I want to write. I do think about it. This week I planned to write about 'staying on your own path' and I will later because it is an active thought for me.

But here is my burp. I just wrote my former husband a letter. I had super indigestion about it and just had to 'burp' it. Seriously, I felt compelled. It is June 11th and today would have been our 53rd wedding anniversary. We were married for 13 years and had two children. We have had very little contact over the years. There are many reasons for that--mostly hurt on my side and maybe guilt on his. I don't know. I find myself being fond of the youth we shared together. We were young once-- and innocent. We started our marriage in the Peace Corps. A newpaper photographed us with the title, "Saving the World from Communisn". That's the kind of youthful innocence I'm talking about.

I visited my former mother-in-law last week-end along with my daughter and hers and it was just right to do. She is 97 and gorgeous. Check it out on my Facebook page JoyceWS. We have stayed connected and she loves and flirts with my husband David. David and I were lucky to have all grandparents of the kids like the idea of a combined family of five kids. They were nuts too. 

The visit was long enough to elicit lots of good memories and history. I had periodically thought of a more complete resolution of my former marriage but you just try five kids and a demanding job and try to think of gathering energy and goodwill to do it!!  

Here is the only sentence that matters in the letter and that I want to share. "I want to move into the present tense with peace and love for all of us and our history." That's it. It is my present truth that was nagging at me and needed to be spoken. It so clears the clutter of past wrongs and hurts. Now if I only could and would  do the same with the physical clutter of the same number of years!!!
 

CELEBRATING!!

 Off to California for a long week-end to celebrate 4 generations of women.  My daughter and her daughter are off to visit my former mother-in-law who is just old enought to be impressive.
So glad to be doing it. So excited I can't pack. Mama Mia. Talk to you next week. I go computerese.

SWEET SURRENDER

The word 'surrender' has been rolling around in my head all week. It emerges like one of the sayings in the Fifties' toy--the magic eight ball. My intuition is weird. It also sings songs to give me messages! I always walked into work with a song in my head (and often out of my mouth) that seemed to fit the occasion. Not always good either--Whistle While You Work, Get a Job, Smile and the Whole World Smiles With You, You're Late, You're Late for a Very Important Date. That way.

So, 'surrender'?  Not me. Never. Onward. Do or die. Never give up.
Persistence has been good to me and for me. I like being diligent.
Say 'no' to me and I'm all in.
Bat away that word, surrender. 

Then the phrase 'sweet surrender' popped up.  Of course.
This is what I want. Not giving up, but giving in.
My stomach feels the difference immediately.

Some of my 'sweet surrenders' are:

—I'm never going to learn to parallel park. I surrender to looking longer for a parking place.

—I'm always going to read or write before I pick up my mess--which usually is books. I surrender to my clutter.

—I will never have all my grandkids living nearby.  I surrender that loss and double enjoy those I have near

—I will never not be a little naughty and nuts. I surrender my dignity

—I will never be thin. I surrender to being voluptuous!

—I will never be an important author.  I surrender to writing anyway

—I will never get holiday cards out on time.  I surrender to using Valentines' Day for cards--or the 4th of July!

—I will never be young again. I surrender to being mortal.

Whoa. I thought this would be mostly funny. Not so much. Not so much.  But this kind of surrender IS sweet. Try it. Write down your surrenders. You'll experience peace and softness in your stomach when you mean what you say.  Sweet surrender is the ultimate humility of giving in, proof of being very very human.

WHO'DA THUNK!!!

To keep Truth Burps 'true' to its premise, I never know what I'm going to write about and I never write ahead of my deadline. (Probably wouldn't anyway, but you know what I mean.)
However ideas do come and go during the week.  

Here's my funny story for this week and then a thought about a new product that is emerging and will become big. Thus speaketh Joyce.


Story first. I have had easy good health for most of my life. Not now. One does pay the piper, darn it. I am the inflammation poster woman. I have always been interested in emerging health stuff because I have seen many things go from ridicule to mainstream like acupunture, vegetarian diet, omnipresent Yoga for Pete's sake. So I decide to go to a functional doctor.  (The Institute for Functional Medicine teaches practitioners how to uncover the underlying causes of your health problems through careful history taking, physical examination, and laboratory testing)


I make the appointment from Mexico. I go two days ago. Th e office is hard to find and poorly signed. I wonder. Nice enough inside. Hour long form to fill out. Could use it as a structure for a memoir. Nice education room. Lots on agriculture and plants. I meet with the doctor who is lovely--organized, tender, listens deeply, seems well versed in my issues AND ends up certifying me for medical marijuana use!!! She gives me a list of possible 'products' and where the dispensary is. I laugh my head off and so does she. I am so proud of my little card and can't wait to tell my kids. This was the best medical exam I've ever had. She will do much more traditional testing and treatment. 

I just like to see how things emerge and morph and manifest. Marijuana has gone from evil to boringly practical and highly refined!! And I am very curious.

OK, I hate writers and workshop leaders who don't do what they say they will. So new product? Solitude and silence. It's starting now. People are paying to disconnect and to avoid being overstimulated. We are drowning in stuff and connectivity and are willing to pay for 
stepping away from it. Let's watch how that emerges. More on this----maybe. 

NOTES FROM 'THE MUSER'

Who knows how things work?  I do know that one day, maybe three years ago, I bumped into an ancient email (and I use GMail) from a college friend. We were inseparable our Freshman year. Life happened and we lost touch. (I like that phrase--lost touch) We lost touch, not spirit.
And so we correspond. Often--laughing, telling our truth, sighing, hurting when the other hurt, telling our stories and musing. My friend is a muser. She muses. Beautifully. I share this musing with her permission. She recently ended an email with it.

acts of compassion, acts of random kindness, consideration--these are the human gestures i find uplifting. righteous conviction, blatant self-interest, hatred and prejudice in all their guises, intentional deception--these are the human behaviors that make me discouraged and sad. i choose to and must believe that most people desire and strive to be "good" and that what is considered "news" are, in fact, aberrations and acts of ignorance.

choice.

always choice. 

BLESS OUR NOVELISTS

I just read two books back to back--A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marr and The Year Before the War by Helen Simonson. The first is about the impact of somewhat recent wars on Chechnya and the second about World War I.  They were both compelling in  different ways--tone, 

hope, cultural context, individual heroism and lousy-ism.

I admire both for the work the authors did on historical accuracy and the plot turns that in any work that did not include war could be labeled contrived. Marr's book had such sharp edged particular people. Simonson's were more the usual British prototypes but not false nor flat regardless. I think it was the specificity, the details in both that gagged me, more in the Chechnya book because the horror was always there. There was no one lived outside the atrocities.  Both allow that war 'is' and will be.

In both, there was the petty  cruelty of cultural class war and the ever presentcruelty of individual hate and pain. 
I am sober after reading them, not that I haven't been many times before after reading about our ability to hate and kill. This time I am sober because I am aware that we are at the cusp of deciding if war just 'is' or whether we can turn back from the edge of allowing competing differences turn into unalterable damage. Do we live at the brink and won't know it?  Or are we in just one more cosmic burp of violence and hate that just 'is'?  Do we need the life and death drama in order to have respite after the destruction?  Nature or nurture?  What can we change?  What will we change?  And what will we accept?  What do we accept in our daily lives where, instead, we could sow tolerance and compassion and don't?  

You see, this is what novels are for--showing us dramatic choices.  Bless the authors.