Driven to Nowhere

I've been charged with the daunting task of setting goals. Not only for this semester, but I also have to consider my goals for the next five years. I am finding this to be a difficult job. I think that my lack of a "home" has set me on this path of resistance. Restless as I feel rootless. Everywhere is my home, and at the same time nowhere is my home. It is my goal to be happy*, which is a day to day choice.

In class, we brainstormed (I did a freewrite, although I'm usually a clusterer). The prompt was basically: success in five years. I of course, explored the abstract ideas of success and happiness: what is success? What is happiness*? Does success equal happiness*? Does happiness* equal success? I never really got to any concrete examples of what would make me successful.

I tried brainstorming goals in my catch-all journal, but I couldn't. I was hesitant record "future" things in a journal which contains my "past." I don't want to look back and see the things that I wanted to be and have them taint the portrait of who I was. We are always changing, moving. I am always changing, moving as a wanderer without a home.

Maybe I'm just not driven or motivated enough to set goals. Maybe it's my nomad mentality that keeps my on this wandering path. I often question my choice of major, my decision to go to grad school. I've even questioned my previous "goal" of getting my Ph.D, and have decided to set that one aside for now. I don't want who I want to be to shape who I am now, I want to be who I am now and then see where that leads me next.

I often say that I want to quit school and open a bakery that sells things like "Golden Girl's Cheesecake." I might open the bakery, but I know I won't quit. I have to stick it out now, and I know I'll be so proud once I do. But I don't want to see earning my MA as "the next step on my path to becoming _____" but rather as a bend in the road of life--which ultimately has only one destination.

I will become/be what I am, what I am "supposed" to be. I will become what I want to be--happy*, if I am what I want to be now--happy*.

*Happy=content=enlightened=pleased with my actions=some other abstract idea that I am having trouble putting into words

One year later

Here it is one year later and I am making another post. I really just remembered about this blog. Maybe it will be revived, or maybe it will just fall by the wayside with all of the other mini-blogs or online diaries that I started. It seems as though once again I am struggling with the concept of home. While I have a job now, I don't have anything lined up for this summer and it makes me think that I may have to pick up and go somewhere else. While I've lived in south/southeast texas my whole life, I can't help but feel that a change is coming. I don't know how I'll feel about any other place, but maybe experiencing someplace else will make me realize that this really is my home. Or maybe I'll find a new one. Or maybe I'll wander for a while.

There's more?!?

It seems as though everyone else in my class has abandoned their blogs, and I had thought about it as well. But today, I just felt like writing about home and this seemed an appropriate and familiar spot to wrestle with it for a while.

I was thinking about how transitory my homes seem. It feels like I can never get to a piece of land that I can claim. I don't own a home or land. My parent's don't own a home or land. This has bred within me the feeling that I don't have one. Even my country was taken from some one else, and sometimes I feel I don't really belong to the land here.

That's all for now.

Where have all the Chrismas Classics Gone?

Lately, I have been turning to old traditions to boost my holiday spirit (Which is in full swing this year, perhaps trying to compensate for the absence of my mom). I was looking forward to watching the old holiday classics from childhood: Santa Clause is Coming to Town, Rudolph, Frosty, The Year Without a Santa Clause, and my new favorite The Life and Adventures of Santa Clause. But the family channel's 25 Days of Christmas lineup looks more like this: Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Cars, The Incredibles. What do ANY of these have to do with Christmas? They have relegated all of the classics into a one-day marathon, which they don't even give you a schedule for! I suppose that we really DO have to take responsibility for our own traditions. I'll have to buy them on DVD.

The problem is IDENTIFYING traditions and then deciding which ones to KEEP GOING. I have difficulties doing this, because there are no set traditions that are called "traditions" in my family. There is simply our way of doing things. Is making homemade ornaments a tradition? I don't know that we did it every year, so does it still count?
This year I'm going to try out the tradition of making a yule log cake (Bushe de Noel) and see how it goes over. Maybe it will become a yearly thing, or maybe I'll find something else.

The Year Without a Santa Claus

I know that I haven't posted in a while, and I apologize. It's been difficult to keep up with blogging since the holiday rush has begun.

This weekend, I visited home. My sisters and I cleaned my dad's house and went through (some of) my mother's things; mostly clothes. Since we all live out of town, we decided against trying to hold a garage sale. It would have been too difficult, anyway. My mother's things hold sentimental value, and it would be impossible to put a price on them that satisfied both my family and garagesalers alike. Some things hold more weight than others, like the dress that she wore to my sister's wedding. It reminds me that she won't be there if/when I get married.

We also got a chance to go through some of our old things, especially dance costumes. I chose to donate mine, as I know some little fluffy girl will love being able to play dress-up in pretty costumes, but my sister kept most of hers. You could attribute it to the fact that she is now a dance teacher herself, and she sees the value in them for that reason. I tend to believe it is because she is more sentimental than I am. I rarely keep things for keepsake alone. She is a scrapbooker and a picture-taker. I am a packrat, but not for keepsakes. Throw away all of my stuff from highschool! Am I really ever going to look at it again? I have a few of my mother's things, and I suspect over the next few years I will take more from my father's house. But I know her memory is alive inside me and these things only serve as touchstones to jog my memory about specific moments in time.

My boyfriend's mother told me at Thanksgiving that she has already begun to divvy up her possessions for her children when she passes. They were even joking that they were going to get colored stickers and mark what they wanted. I think this is sad, but practical.

It is not the possessions that hold so many memories for me, but noting when she isn't there. For instance, while I was spending Thanksgiving with my boyfriend's family, tears welled up more than once just noting how differently his family interacts. It has never been a large holiday for my family, and I didn't quite know how to be a part of the festivities. I was still missing my mother. It also pains me that my father will not be putting up a tree this year. I understand why he doesn't want to, but he didn't even consider it. Last year, we had a few presents to open, since my mother had ordered some from catalogs before she passed. But this year, we will have nothing under the nonexistent tree, since my dad told us not to get him anything and he's not getting us anything. I'm a little resentful because part of my mother's spirit is being Santa Claus.

I suppose it is time for me to start my own traditions and take charge of my own celebration of the season, even if others are being "scrooges."

Story Learning

I had a bit of an A-Ha moment yesterday, a very little one.

I attended the poetry/fiction reading yesterday afternoon. One of the participants read a fictional story about suffering through cancer while dealing with an alcoholic mother. I do not have a terminal illness, nor do I have (or have I ever had) an alcoholic mother. But some of the things that this young lady was talking about (through her character) I could relate to. I had cancer at one time, so I know what it's like to come home from the doctor's office in a daze, not quite sure what to do with yourself. Because of her story, I reflect on my own relationship with my mother before, during, and after my treatment. This is actually helpful, because a large part of what is going into my personal essay is my struggles and my mother's struggles with the medical field.

I suppose the A-Ha moment was the realization that we really do learn through stories.

Family Photos

I have realized how little I know about my family, including my immediate family. Maybe I’m just a little self-centered, being the baby of the family and all. I never thought too much about the life my family had before me. How did my parent’s meet? What kind of pets did they have? What was the old house like?

My family existed as a family before I was in the picture, literally. There is an official family photo of them. We never retook a family portrait, and I never let them forget it. I don’t even think we have a snapshot of all of us together.

I have never been big on pictures. Only recently have I noticed that the only pictures I have of my mother and me (here in Corpus Christi with me) are the one that I was given for Christmas last year after she passed away and one Polaroid of her and me in the hospital when I was born, off-center and washed-out.

***

I have decided to write my final paper about my mother. She was a housewife/homemaker/stay at home mom. I don’t know what the theme of my paper should be. I want to honor my mother, but what do I write in and what do I omit? I mean, I have 24+ years worth of experiences that we have had, but which of those will fit together to make up an overarching theme for my paper? Maybe I bit off more than I could chew with this assignment.

Maybe my focus isn’t my mother, but my relationship with her. Or the issues that we as women struggle/d with. Unfortunately, I can’t just pick up the phone and ask her what it was like to be a young woman in the late sixties/early seventies, to get married at age seventeen, to raise three girls and never finish high school, to be married for 37 years; I suppose that I have to show all of this with the stories.