Just Breathe May 3, 2009

Lina and I were having one of our classic mother-daughter conversations while I was driving her to CCD the other day. She told me I would be very excited by what she had to say.

“Why is that, honey?”

“You won’t believe what is in my homework folder.”

She said it in that first-gradey, sing-song voice… the way Donkey sings when he’s searching inside the windmill for Fiona in the first Shrek movie: “Princess… It’s very spooky in here and I ain’t playing no games.”

I tried to imagine what could possibly be in her homework folder that would make me “very excited.” Was it a stack of fifties? A winning lottery ticket? One-way airfare to Italy?

“Soccer sign-ups is in there.”

She was pleased as punch to torment me with this information. She knows I get a charge out of watching her play, but she’s only played on a team once. She always acts like she’s not interested, but you wouldn’t know it by the way she kicks my butt in the backyard. Often after we finish clearing the dinner dishes, I’ll take her and Gianni out to the backyard and we’ll scrimmage. The back wall of the house is my goal and the side of the shed is hers. (G-man is the ref, but I have yet to get him an official whistle.) I have to say, the kid is good, real good and if futbol skills are transferred down the bloodline, it must come from the Petti strand of her DNA chain, because the Donnelly’s don’t have the ability nor the interest to pursue an evasive ball . Stick us on a battlefield or a fishing boat or a large comfortable chair, and we are in our respective elements. Kevin is the exception, but we think maybe he’s from space.

I asked her why I should be so excited about that, seeing as she wasn’t going to let me sign her up anyway.

“Because you love it when I play soccer,” she said, very much impressed with herself.

“You’re right, sweetie,” I said. “I do love when you play soccer.” I was immediately stricken ill at the very idea, aghast at the image of myself now as a thirty-something soccer mom. I checked my pulse, double checked that I wasn’t driving a mini-van, and dabbed at the sweat beginning to bead between my boobs.

“I’m real good at it, right mom?” she asked.

“Yes, you are really good at it, honey. How ’bout we sign you up?” I glanced at her in the rear view mirror to evaluate her reaction.

“Nah,” she replied. “I don’t want to.”She held her hand out the window watching it float on invisible waves of air.

One thing is for sure, the kid has always known what she wants. Her most passionate desires typically revolve around Spongebob episodes, chocolate, climbable trees and web-manipulated plush toys, but sports don’t seem to rank supreme.

In my own sly way, I attempted to subtly weave in the value of team sports, even if it meant refusing to openly admit how much I hated them myself when I was her age.

“Pickles, didn’t you have fun when you played soccer with Erin last year?”

Erin is her best friend, so I figured manipulation surely must have it’s benefits.

“I guess it was fun.”

“What was your favorite part?” I asked her, hoping to reel in the vision for her.

She thought about this for a moment and then replied with a sudden jolt of enthusiasm, “I like the break part!”

I laughed out loud. “The break part?”

“Yeah. The break part,” she said. “You know, when we stop playing and eat snacks and drink juice?”

“Oh okay,” I said with a chuckle. “Did you also like the part when you ran around kicking the ball with your friends?”

She thought about this and replied, “Yeah. I like that part too, but I like the break part best because after all that running, my breath was outta sight.”

So Much To Say December 2, 2008

Haven’t written in so long. I’m doing The Artist’s Way course with 4 of my new Porch Club friends. We are really enjoying it. There’s been a dizzying amount of mind-boggling synchronicity in my life. So much I want to write about and say, yet at the end of the day, there’s no time left to do it. And work is far too chaotic to squeeze writing in sideways during the day. For the life of me, I still have no idea how I’m going to make deadline. By the grace of God, go I. Sufficed to say, writing… once again… will have to wait.

Budding Artiste October 13, 2008

I told Michaelina this morning that I finally turned in my story to my teacher yesterday. I knew she would be happy to hear that, because it meant I could now spend more time reading to her every night instead of cutting our story hour short due to my pesky homework assignments.

“What was your story about?” she asked me.

“It was about my mommy,” I replied.

“What about your mommy?” I think she may have expected me to talk about the stroke.

“I wrote about how she used to yell at me a lot when I was a little girl.”

“She did?” She seemed incredulous.

“Yeah, and it made me think about how sometimes I yell at you and I wish I wouldn’t do that.”

She fumbled with the ponytail holder in her hand as I brushed my teeth.

“I wrote a story about you too, mommy.”

“You did? When?”

“In my journal at school.”

Mild anxiety came over me as I wondered how my precious baby girl might relate her emotional stress in words.

“Really? What was it about?” I tried to act casual.

“It was about Gianni taking my dolls and you yelling at him to stop.”

I wasn’t sure if I should be relieved or terrified.

“Oh, okay. Well, that sounds like a good story.”

“Then I wrote about me stealing his lovie and you yelling at me to give it back to him.”

“Hmmm,” I replied. “Is that part made up?”

She shuffled her feet on the bathroom floor and said. “Yeah. I made that part up.”

I thought about how our class has been discussing at length how creative non-fiction authors are permitted certain liberties with the “truth” as they see it.

“Honey, it sounds like you are a really good writer.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I am.”

Care Free October 9, 2008

When I was around 16 years old, I had had enough of popularity contests, cliques, fashion show-offs, and the backstabbing adolescent status quo. By the time I finished up my sophmore year of high school, I had decided I didn’t care anymore what people thought of me. I had been the target of ridicule and inside (and outside) jokes for so long, that I no longer cared if anyone at all wanted to be my friend. I didn’t care what people thought of my wardrobe, my taste in music or my hairstyle. I sincerely detached, not out of self-pity or some dark, victimized despair. I literally woke up one day and realized I was spinning my wheels, going against the grain. I had to stop trying to please everyone. I realized that by trying so hard to live up to people’s expectation of me, my whole life had become essentially contrived. I longed to finally live sincerely for myself and didn’t want to turn my back anymore to what I personally enjoyed as fun, funny, interesting or uplifting. This included my taste in movies, books, music, clothes and spirituality.

The oddest thing happened once I suddenly decided to stop going along to get along. People began saying hello to me in the hallway, laughing at my wit, asking me to hang out, sit with them at lunch, go to parties, carpool. My decision to stop caring had backfired and I quickly developed a broad social circle of girls and guys from every walk of life, popular and not, who didn’t seem to care whether I cared or not.

A dear friend once told me that people are like magnets. If you push against the pole of one and it repels, it doesn’t matter how hard or how long you push, you will never connect. If you turn around and walk in the other direction though, you’ll find that magnetic forces from every direction will come crashing up against your back, practically begging for your attention.

For a long time now… several years actually… I have been allowing myself to feel let down by my family, friends, coworkers and neighbors. They say things and do things that leave me feeling anxious, unappreciated, unheard, unloved. I just realized today that I’m falling into that old, recognizable pattern. I need to stop trying so hard to be everything to everyone. Stop being a people pleaser and just be myself. Live. Laugh. Love. Just like it says on my bathroom wall.

I can hear people whispering when I walk by sometimes… amusing themselves at my expense… just like when I was 16  years old… and you know what? For too long now I’ve been letting them get to me. Wishing they would try to get to know the real me – how much I long to be understood. Then suddenly it all strikes me as meaningless and prideful. I need to flip the switch again.

The less I try to fit in, the happier we’ll all be.

THANK YOU! October 8, 2008

To everyone who offered thoughts, concerns, prayers, chants, well wishes, comments, rain dances, and zen meditations. Brian found a replacement for his Iraq deployment. YAY! The needle in the haystack has been found and the great crisis if officially over!

Now… who’s got the whiskey?

There are not words October 4, 2008

My baby brother received orders last night. He’s going to Iraq for a year. He leaves in 6 weeks.

I have nothing more to say about that.

Easy Landings September 18, 2008

Babysitters are harder to come by now that my mom had the stroke. As of last night, we still didn’t have a sitter for the G-man for Erika & Nate’s wedding. Michaelina overheard Aunt Sue and I discussing it and she asked why Nana wasn’t going to babysit.

“Because Nana’s afraid she’ll lose her balance while she’s holding the baby,” I told her.

“Well,” she said. “She can just sit down and hold him.”

I smiled at her sweetness and cupped her chin. “What about when she carries him up the stairs to bed, honey?”

“Oh,” she replied. “I forgot about that part.”

I went on to tell Lina that the day Nana had her stroke was the day she was supposed to babysit. She had gotten really upset about it because she kept saying what if it happened while she was holding the baby on the steps? It made her feel very scared to babysit again.

Lina mulled this over, sighed and said, “I wish our floors had fur.”

Her heartfelt sincerity and expression puzzled me. “Fur, honey?”

“Yeah, you know, like Uncle Brian and Aunt Marci have. You know? On their steps?”

“You mean carpet?”

“Yeah, carpet. I wish our whole house had carpet so if Nana drops the baby, both of them could just land on the soft fur.”

Songs & Signs? September 16, 2008

My co-worker told me about Pandora.com today. It’s free internet radio. You punch in the songs and artists that you love and it creates a customized station for you that revolves around your musical preferences. I’m so amazed and excited at each new song that appears in my playlist, I’m like a little girl on Christmas day. It’s like the most fabulous present for getting me into a cheerful groove at work. I find myself wondering, “HEY! How did they know I love this song?!” There’s a spring in my step and a smile on my face on this otherwise bland Tuesday morning. I swear, it’s so amazing what music can do.

Speaking of what music can do, Neal and I started “Songwriting Saturdays” at our house this past weekend. Louis came over with the girls and played a pretty little piano ditty while Neal and Krista chimed in on acoustic guitar. Brittany, Mary and I wrote down whatever lyrical ideas came to mind. After a little while, we “lyricists” pooled together our efforts and Brittany sat down and took all three of our ideas to compose three verses, a chorus and bridge. Neal and Louis fooled around with a melody line and Presto! In less than two hours time we had an original song. Well, sort of. It needs some work, but I was so excited and giddy that Mary, Krista and Brittany thought I was totally weird. Something new.

So this morning on Pandora I entered that I liked Paul Simon. It delightfully brought up for me his Graceland, CS&N Southern Cross, Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain, Dire Straights’ Romeo & Juliet and JT’s Mexico. Then, all of a sudden, as I’m typing this post, I hear (!) Simon’s Song About The Moon…

If you want to write a song about the moon
Walk along the craters of the afternoon
When the shadows are deep
And the light is alien
And gravity leaps like a knife off the pavement
And you want to write a song about the moon
You want to write a spiritual tune
Then nah nah nah
Presto
Song about about the moon
If you want to write a song about the heart
Think about the moon before you start
Because the heart will howl
Like a dog in the moonlight
And the heart can explode
Like a pistol on a June night
So if you want to write a song about the heart
And its ever-longing for a counterpart
Write a song about the moon
The laughing boy
He laughed so hard
He fell down from his place
The laughing girl
She laughed so hard
The tears rolled down her face
Hey songwriter
If you want to write a song about
A face
Think about a photograph
That you really cant remember
But you cant erase
Wash your hands in dreams and lightning
Cut off your hair
And whatever is frightening
If you want to write a song
About a face
If you want to write a song about
The human race
Write a song about the moon
If you want to write a song about the moon
You want to write a spiritual tune
Then do it
Write a song about the moon

We Shall Never Forget September 11, 2008

I just read an article about the memorial services being held today at Ground Zero. It said that people are being permitted to descend 7 stories underground to touch the spot where their loved ones died on 9/11.

Reading this caused me to involuntarily lurch forward in my seat and let out an audible moan, which quickly prompted an “Are you alright?” from my coworker. It was startling, my reaction, and totally primal… off-pitch with a melancholy depth, like a lone wolf howling at the moon. I hadn’t intended the noise, nor it seemed, did I possess the ability to prevent it. It just “happened.”

In the brief moment that it took me to read that sentence and let out that sound, I had assimilated their pain. The pain of the people surely still grieving. Of their loved ones who felt the earth quake beneath their feet. I am thinking of their fear, their panic, their desperation. I am thinking of the children whose parents went to work that day and never came home…

In some remote way, I am thinking of me. My father may not have been killed by terrorists, but how would I feel if someone invited me to go and stand where my dad had died? To touch the spot where the explosion claimed his life? To visualize the moment of impact, reflect upon whether or not he saw it coming, and question whether he suffered as the flames lapped at his panic-stricken body?

People have said that my father didn’t suffer, that it was “fast” and he never saw it coming. That is “comfort” to the tragically bereaved. If they are right and my father never knew what hit him, then he (and we) are “lucky” compared to the victims and families of 9/11.

Try and envision yourself absentmindedly glancing out your office window on any given Monday, only to realize the impending impact of a jetliner headed straight for your cubicle. Try and imagine being on the floors above or below, having no recourse other than to throw your body headlong out of the building. Try and imagine being the spouse or child frantically calling their loved one to check and see if they were in that wing of the pentagon, in that tower, in that plane, in that field, in that cubicle? Now, that’s suffering.

Should the desperate souls of those whose lives were robbed that day still be floating somewhere in some unreconciled dimension, may they somehow be comforted by knowing that we remember them… and we shall never forget.

The Fall: A Sestina
By Denise Petti

A perfect September day. All seemed right.
Hustling, bustling, and planning for the Fall
When a rattle so hard shook the whole earth,
And I cradled my unborn baby close.
I sat in horror and could only watch
A helpless  nation  as, head first, it dove.

Into a building, a plane fiercely  dove
and nothing again would ever seem right.
Distraught, we felt wholly sickened to watch.
How could we have been prepared for the fall?
Surreal as appalling darkness drew close
So many children abandoned on earth.

Their bodies fell fast against the hard earth
as straight to the ground, two tall buildings  dove.
Leveled and shocked, our wide eyes would not close
in prayer to a Dear God to make things right.
In anxious times, hopes rise and fall.
Heroes arrive…  and with faith we all watch

I can recall glancing  at my wrist watch
mere minutes before I had watched the earth
quake underfoot, and dust begin to fall
Glancing out the window at mourning doves
Would anything ever again feel right?
Claustrophobic deathbeds now drawn up close

Too soon for this wretched chapter to close
Too unbearable to just stand and watch
We clung to whatever we thought was right
and sobbed with despair into the dry earth
Into the silence, our empty prayers dove
and into the darkness our tears did fall

I shall never forget that dreadful fall,
No catastrophe  will ever come close,
to the awful day our Twin Towers dove
and I could do nothing, but sit, stare and watch.
Paralyzed and anguished , glued to the earth,
Bewildered  by what terrorists deemed right

Legs go weak and I fall. I cannot watch
Clutching my belly close, I hit the earth.
The doves take their shelter…  nothing feels right.

I did it. September 2, 2008

It wasn’t exactly the performance of a lifetime, but I did complete my first triathlon. I said I was doing it for the “fun” of it, but I have to say, whomever does these things for “fun” is surely insane or else a glutton for punishment. My body feels like it’s been used and abused. My knees are killing me. I cannot walk, unless you consider shuffling my feet without them leaving the ground “walking?” I broke a toenail clean off. My second left toe is a bloody stump. (Still don’t know quite how that happened?) I have no desire to do anything but sleep… and in fact I went to bed at 7:50 pm last night and woke up at 7:40 am this morning, without even so much as waking up to pee or even turning over.

I set out to simply cross the finish line and I did. It took me a little over 1 hour and 43 minutes to swim 1/4 mile, bike 11 miles and run 3.2 miles. The sad thing is that I had a rough time celebrating my “success.” I was so disappointed at the unexpected snafus I encountered, that I spent much of the remainder of the race berating myself. As if my “time” really mattered? As if I would really “place”?

As the swim began, I felt strong and confident. I maintained a smooth, steady pace. My nerves hadn’t gotten the better of me, as I had worried about. I didn’t lose my breath, as I had feared, and I didn’t overexert myself and expend too much too soon. But when I finally looked up from the murky, dense, cedar water to check my progress and gather my bearings, I noticed I was completely alone. No other swimmers surrounded me. For an alarmingly hilarious second, I thought, “Could I be winning?” And in that same moment, the preposterousness of that thought humbled me. I looked for the orange dingies that marked the course and saw that I was hundreds of yards away from them… in the middle of the lake… completely off course. I realized my error and watched as the wave of powder blue swim caps, the same color as my own, approached the shore. By the time I re-entered the course, I was swimming with the yellow caps from the wave that had started 3 minutes behind me. I struggled to regain my composure and rhythm, overcompensating and fatiguing fast.

I dragged my already defeated body from the water as my husband and friends screamed my name and cheered me on. I wonder if they could tell how disappointed I already was? Our friend Mike called out for me to “DO IT FOR DAVID COVERDALE!” He made me laugh and the thought of David Coverdale put a spring in my step.

The transition from swim to bike went surprisingly well, I thought. It wasn’t as confusing and time-consuming as I’d imagined. Although I had never run in my clipless shoes before, it wasn’t all that difficult. (But maybe that’s how I broke my toenail, come to think of it?) Soon I was on my bike and pedaling strong and steady, even passing several other riders. I felt great. Then the time came to switch gears. That’s when I discovered that my gears were not working. Somehow my cable had become stretched, so the gear shifters wouldn’t engage. Needless to say I rode 11 miles in the largest, slowest gear. Uphill. Downhill. Flat. I was up out of my seat for much of the uphills, expending way too much energy and growing wearier and wearier. Rider after rider after rider called out “On your left,” as they whizzed by, leaving me in their dust. It’s hard not to feel weak and washed up after practically the entire registered roster of every shape, age and size blows right by you.

But eventually I found my way back to transition # 2. I returned with my bike just as Lock called out “Do it for Nikki Sixx!” which was the perfect mix of wit and whimsy to grant me my 3rd wind. I threw a headband on, laced up my running sneakers and left transition #2 with a packet of “gu” in my hand, courtesy of my training partner, Christine. Now I hadn’t ever eaten “gu” before, so in hindsight I probably shouldn’t have made the race event my first taste test. I also hadn’t taken notice of the flavor Christine had given me, although she did mention offhandedly that it contained caffeine. Well, so what? So does Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper. No worries. But I don’t drink coffee because I absolutely despise the taste of it. So needless to say, as I entered the 5k course and the espresso-flavored gu hit my taste buds, I involuntarily wanted to puke, cry and go home all at the same time. But I still had 3 miles… about 35 minutes… to go… with slimy coffee-flavored gu taste in my mouth. UGH!

When I reached the halfway point at 1.5 miles, the activity on the road was sparse. All the other racers had already finished or were so far ahead of me that they may as well have been finished as far as I was concerned. They had all lapped me about 15 minutes beforehand. The only people surrounding me now were senior citizens (our ages were marked on our calves), cancer survivors (judging by the bandanas on a few bald female heads), overweight ladies, and the occasional event photographer. I certainly felt an unhealthy dose of shame creep up on me as I plodded along on what had to have been a 13-minute mile, getting passed by a very sweet, but skeletal 69-year old , silver-haired chap in a cornflower blue speedo, followed by an overweight, 54-year old, wheezing asthmatic who also ended up beating me.
To battle the negativity loop that was beginning to play over and over in my head, I started praying in rhythm with my footfalls. Each time my foot hit the ground, I’d say the name of someone I was running for. Not before long, I felt my pace increasing a little bit. Then I replaced the names with gratitude. I quietly whispered “Thank You” aloud each time one foot left the earth and the other one found it. After about a 1/4 mile, I felt strong again, like I had in the very beginning… before I had veered off course in my swim. I replaced my “thank yous” with “fun, fun, fun, i’m having fun, fun, fun…” keeping the rhythm with my steps and this is how I found myself approaching the finish line, never having stopped even once to walk, cry, puke or quit.

I saw my husband smiling, taking pictures and video-taping me. I saw a couple friends waiting there, cheering, screaming my name and waving a sign with my name on it. I heard my friend Michelle scream, “YEAH DENISE! ENJOY THAT FINISH!” Then I saw the clock and I saw that I really did it.