Top 10 Tuesday

Welcome. It is the last Tuesday in November. I hope this month was lovely to you. And if it wasn't, new beginnings and insight are everywhere. November has been a trying month in tandem with being full of inspiration for future projects and endeavors. So, welcome to

The Top 10

1. Mom's Hard Love My mother is the most amazing woman I know. And I'm not being biased. For a very unfavorable reason, I've been going home every weekend this past month to visit with family. The sadness I have been feeling this past month has been doing what it always does, every time: it bleeds. It bleeds into good moments with a friend I haven't seen in a while. It bleeds into a letter I'm writing to a loved one. It bleeds into my workspace. It bleeds into one of the several books I purchased the past week to distract myself. It bleeds out my words, my thank you, my no problem, my you're amazing, my I love you. And of course, like any mother, my mother sees my sadness. She doesn't need to ask why I am sad and she doesn't need to ask about the bleeding because she knows about the bleeding. She asks me why I'm so hard on myself and my mind doesn't have an answer, but my mouth does. I bitch about my crooked foot, its pain, how there's no time to do all the things I want to do, how I don't have that best friend to turn to, etc. I rage and curse and poison the air with my excuses and losses. My face is an honest, handwritten letter, ruined by rain. My mother's build-a-bridge-and-get-over-it talks are helpful even though I still sit there in her wake and sulk. It's as if I haven't grown into a 31-year-old woman. At this moment, my body and my mind are finally in agreement. They both want to be sad. They both want to hate themselves. They both want to throw rocks at something fragile and empty. When hard words are thrown at me by someone who knows my fragility, that's when I at least listen. The next step is up to me.

2. Running As most of you know, I sustained a serious injury back in February and even though I'm up and walking, the injury has most definitely slowed me down. My movement, it is more deliberate, careful, and dare I say mindful. The days that I can walk across a room without pain, limping, or thought are huge blessings. Last year, I was running ten miles at a time with my dog Silas. My ability to walk, hike, and run any amount of miles was my only source of pride. And it was taken away from me. This year will be one that I will eventually forgive and learn from (but I'll still end my sentences in prepositions). Anyway, my mother's hard love--her reminder not to let my bad foot be an excuse--will hopefully come to fruition. When I was crying out my frustrations to her, she said Oh I wish you could just run and get this energy out of you! My negative energy. Me too! I cried. And now I sort of, only a little, kind of laugh. Because I can do it and I am doing it. Not gracefully. Not painlessly. Not for long periods of time. But I'm getting there. Will running ever be enjoyable again? Probably not unless I enter a deep, nirvana-like, meditative trance. So, probably never. But I'll still try.

3. Jenn I haven't seen my friend Jenn in quite a while and we made time to see each other on Black Friday night. Seeing her was just what I needed.

4. Little Brian on Christmas This is my adorable boyfriend. He's about 20+ years older now, but still stylin'. His mother sent him this picture today and I'm a smitten kitten.

5. Lady Bird I have seen several movies since I received my MoviePass in the mail. I was grateful to be near a theater that was showing "Lady Bird", a coming-of-age film written and directed by Greta Gerwig. I enjoyed the film; however, when watching it I felt like it was a movie based off a book because I kept having questions and wondering huh, maybe it's in the book. There is no book. Despite understanding the gorgeous brutality and determination in the overall film, I personally don't understand all the hype. The characters, despite life changes, all seemed static to me. This is not a bad thing. I think there's a lesson in such static.

5. Greta Gerwig's Letters The above writer/director wrote impassioned letters to Dave Matthews, Alanis Morissette, and Justin Timberlake, asking their permission to use certain songs for very paramount moments during the film. You can read those letters here.

6. Robert Macfarlane When out of the house, we keep the radio or television on for the dogs. Typically, we leave NPR on the radio. After a particularly exhausting day, I came home and immediately sat down before doing anything else. On the radio was a man named Robert Macfarlane talking about words. Words! I love those things! Turns out he's a Brit who has written books--all of which I want to own and read--and he was on NPR's show "On the Media" discussing new language for our changing world (our Anthropocene Era). Fascinating, right? Right! If you're interested in listening to the show, click here. The name of the episode is "Apocalypse, Now".

7. Old Pictures On Thanksgiving, my mother brought out a charming little box of old pictures from her childhood. After realizing how much I was drooling over the old pictures, she let me keep all of them.

8. The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded This is a book of poetry written by Molly McCully Brown, the daughter of my former fiction writing professor. I was at the Barnes & Noble in Fox Chapel and was stunned to see her book on the shelf so close to Charles Bukowski (they're not similar in style, but they're both amazing). If you look at the picture of her on her website, you'll see that she is in a wheelchair. All her life, she has lived with cerebral palsy and I feel safe in saying that through her palsied, fretful, and yet passionate relationship with her condition, she has brought into the world such beauty, both divine and horrific. Having grown up near this facility in Virginia, she must have felt compelled to write from those perspectives that could so easily have been her own if she were born just decades prior. It was a lovely debut book of poetry and such a relief to read after all the trite crap that I've seen published lately. Yes. Trite. Crap.

And such a lovely cover.

9. Sleeping with Dogs When I went away to my parents' for the long weekend, I took both dogs with me. No room to stay in, no bed to sleep on, I slept on the couch each night...and so did the dogs. I loved sleeping with them prior to this weekend, don't get me wrong. I always enjoyed their company in my queen-sized bed. But on a six-foot couch is a different, more intimate story. My 80 pound Silas at my feet, and sometimes on my feet, and little Cosmo at my side, his nose in my hair. Or Silas on top of me like a weighted blanket (which was very nice) and Cosmo squeezed in some nook or cranny somewhere. I just didn't have the heart in me to say no or to get down.

10. My Sister's Last Thanksgiving My sister is dying. And there's no question that this past Thanksgiving will be her last. Since moving in with my parents a month ago, it was her first day to get out of bed, walk down the steps, and sit on the couch to be with her mother, father, and sister. Eventually, a few others came by--her son, her daughter, her grandson. She was stunning. It was a good day.

#toptentuesday