That kind of love

2:32 in the morning...I can't sleep. Two cups of warm milk haven't worked. Afraid to take melatonin since I need to be up in a few hours. Instead I'm writing and watching P.S. I Love You and crying. Not even sure why I'm crying except that my heart is sore and it has been all day. I watched a beautiful wedding ceremony today. It hurt. I remember being so sincerely in love before. Wide awake in the middle of the night I wonder if I ever will be again. I have ... I think,  but not being able to tell the other person how I feel makes it hard to tell. When you're twenty something and in love it's easy to just be in love. You float along on it ...the emotion carries you across your days. When you're in your forties its different. You're scared to tell the other person. What if they don't feel the same way? What if they do? When I was younger it seemed like all I had to do was decide which person and head off in that direction. Maybe if I packed up my insecurities and damage from the past it would still be that way.  What I have found is that all the directions I've headed in turned out to be dead ends and I'm tired of hitting my head against the wall. I watched those two gorgeous people pledge their vows and all I wanted to do was to freeze that moment, make it so things NEVER changed for them. Don't mistake me, I'm not jealous of new love, old love, real love. It is a beautiful thing to see and as horrible luck would have it, I miss it.
I do have a lot of love in my life - family, friends, my beautiful kiddos but I want THAT love again. The kind that makes you feel like anything is possible just cuz he called today. The kind where you spend hours not doing much of anything but it's perfect. Where he is concerned for you as much as you are for him. Until I find that again I'll keep on keeping on and wait for him whoever he is. Hopefully he's tall, loves the same music I do, digs my kids, the same sports teams as me, or at least isn't an Angels fan, loves his family and his friends and is fiercely loyal. Too much?
Who knows...I may die waiting.

we met at a house party. We spent the first night together and nearly every night after. We made 3 beautiful kids and a bucket of bad choices. I loved him. I loved him so ,I have that I neglected myself

Class of 2016

'Twas the night before graduation and all through the house momma was cryin who cares about the mouse! Seriously though...I've been so busy this week  that I've barely had time to let it sink in. I believe that was a gift from God and probably a gift for everyone else! I not fun in the middle of a meltdown. Tomorrow my firstborn son will walk across a stage in his cap and gown heading into his future. He's been busy undoing the ties that bind for a few months now which is as it should be. I've been trying to let go and give him the room he needs. It's a process. Just like it was when he was an infant, or a toddler learning to run, an elementary school kid waiting till the last minute to do every project or a high school freshman finding his way on the big campus. All his life has been leading up to this day. The details may not be exactly the way I imagined them way back when and that's ok. What is exactly perfect is the love in my heart for this handsome young man. He's the reason I embarked on this 18 year journey. I think it's fair to say I've learned as much from him as he has from me. I'm not sure how I'll feel tomorrow but tonight I'll cry for the time that passed too quickly and thank God for the opportunity to raise Mason Liam Selsor.  

Weird

Life is weird.

So many really weird situations surrounding me. None of them are situations that I caused but my day to day life will be impacted by the outcome of each one. Friends, family, people I love or have loved in the past are walking a proverbial tight rope. In my head I know I can’t do anything about any of it – I have no dog in the fight as my Grandpa would say. “It’s their journey” is what my Al Anon sponsor tells me, “Let them go and give them to God sweetie”. In my heart I just want things to be calm and good like it is inside the happy bubble I try to live in.

Therein lies the struggle of my life. If I care about you that’s it. I’m all in and good or bad chances are if you have a problem I will try to fix it. I used to be a “fixer” 100% of the time, whether you wanted my help or not. Turns out people don't like uninvited help. Who knew?  After many years in recovery, therapy and more than a few hard lessons I realized that my help is only good if someone asks for it and that your problems aren’t in fact, mine too. I have learned slowly over 15 years that I need to fix myself since I’m the only I can control anyway.

That doesn't mean that I am cured from my people pleasing or my need for approval. Sometimes I still trust the wrong people. This is an unfortunate side effect of wearing your heart on your sleeve. Sometimes I still seek validation from people who could give a shit about anything other than their own opinion. I try to remember that I'm not everyone's cup of tea. That's tough because I pretty much like everyone until they give me a reason not to. 

All that being said I’m human and sometimes I still think I know how YOU should act, or how YOU should handle your problem. The truth is I never do. I watch these situations swirling around my happy bubble like a pack of colorful tornadoes. Each color I see represents the person at the center of the storm. I get bumped by the green one, knocked flat on my ass by the red one, tipped on my side by the blue one but mostly it’s just duck and cover. How can I keep your mess from landing on me? Hell if I know. I admire the people who can completely remove themselves from another person and just not give a shit. At all. No fucks given. I’m working on that but that’s a different kind of tightrope.

I wonder if I’m the only person connected to all these situations that sees them like this. I do know when you’re in the tornado you can’t see a damn thing. Hindsight is 20/20 and all those other cliches. When the dust settles and all these situations are resolved I’ll comb through the wreckage and see what’s left standing and what’s not. I’m not bitter or sad. I believe there’s a valuable lesson for me in each of these situations the trick is not missing it.

And this is my life. Weird, colorful and occasionally painful.

Cast Iron Love

What would you grab in the mad dash of an emergency? Earthquake, fire ...whatever. Pictures of course. the kids, the pets. The usual right? I would include cast iron skillets. Yep. You read that right. Both weapon and culinary necessity no kitchen should be without. Think about it - in an emergency you could totally protect your family AND cook dinner with one of those bad boys. I'm lucky enough to own several, each one belonging to a family member. One from my Mimi and one from my Papa Frank. My mom uses a cast iron skillet every time she cooks and nothing tastes as good as bacon fried in cast iron but I am in NO hurry to have one of her skillets.
Today, Fat Tuesday I'll make a batch of gumbo in Papa's skillet. My hands will go where his once were. It'll almost be like holding his hand again. I'll try to make it taste half as good as his and probably fail miserably but I know he's with me cheering me on. "Go 'head now yungin', add some of this, some of that...don't let it stick sugar, you have to mind the bottom'. He never gave a proper lesson or wrote down a recipe for me but if I was lucky he'd let me sit in the kitchen and watch. He'd yak about the ingredients, how to choose the most ripe this or most tender piece of that. He'd walk back and forth between the stove top and the camel cigarette smoldering on the table chattering away, inevitably yelling at my Mama Jo if the cornbread didn't rise and anyone in earshot would scold him for it. Cooking was the most consistent way my Papa showed his love. Any excuse to throw a shindig and gather all his people together around the table. A true Southern gentleman, being invited to his table was a privilege and never a disappointment. This skillet probably made cousin Andy's favorite pineapple upside down cake. I'm sure it was used in the gravy cook off between Pops and Aunt Deana. Big "after a party" breakfasts of fried (hangover) potatoes that I loved and eggs I wouldn't eat cooked early while George Jones played on the radio. I see and smell the whole room in my mind. That's the beauty of common household items. They're links to our past. Tangible, functional pieces of our personal history.
Mimi's collection of cast iron was a source of pride and she had a piece for every purpose. The corn shaped pan that went along with my sweet Grandpas famous fish fry, the flat griddle with the shiny spot in the center for the pancakes she'd make whenever we slept over. I never wanted to learn to cook. I wasn't even going to have a kitchen in my future house, just a microwave and a mini fridge. What I DID want to do was to always be in Mimi's presence. Sneaky genius that she was, she kept me in the kitchen and slid little lessons about cooking into the conversation. She'd ask about my day or school and slide in the best way to convert measurements into a chat about how I hated my math teacher. "Now Missy fractions are easy, see the way half a cup of buttermilk becomes one cup when I pour in double"? I thought I was just visiting with my Mimi but I was actually learning how to make biscuits. I know how to cook things I never read a recipe for thanks to her constant chatter and patience. Food and the common items used to cook it were a thing of value. Maybe it was something from my grandparents generation - the Depression babies. Food was more than just what you put in your body to survive. It was literally love on a plate. If only those skillets could speak. It wasn't always easy for my grandparents to put food on the table while they were raising their kids but by the time the grand kids came along money was less tight and they got to cook for pleasure more often. They had more patience for us than they had for my parents in the mad dash to just to get dinner on the table. I relate...I am always hurrying to complete the task. The skillet and the memories tell me to slow down, ask the kids to help, slide in between the conversation of "Who's next album is dropping this week and who's eyebrows were on fleek today" the recipe. Tell the story through the food like my Grandparents did. Today I look at this simple piece of metal on my stove top and I know that whether it was stretching a meal out of necessity or making a treasured family "secret" recipe my grandparents did it with love and a cast iron skillet.

August is a reflective month for me. Not January...August. It's my birth month and I tend to look at my life and plan, worry, and wonder about what the next year will look like. In the past I've thought that the plans I made would happen and most of the worries wouldn't. This year I think it'll be 50/50. So much of what we think we have control over is an illusion. I've learned all I can do is to handle the the details to the best of my ability and leave the results to God. I know there are things on my plate that I CAN do sown thing about and things I can't. I can clean my garage and make more space both physically and spiritually. I can't do much about the ovrerabudnace of flies. I can clean up my credit and take steps to compete my degree. I can't do anything about my singlehood. Not sure I want to. It does no good to worry about how long the car will last. Just keep it 

Our house..in the middle of the Street

The title of this post is a line from one of my favorite Madness songs. My train of thought is also stopping at the CSNY station today...."Our house is a very,very,very fine house". The middle of the street is a more accurate description of my current house. At this moment it's not particularly fine but it's safe and my kiddos are there. I moved into this house almost 3 years ago with a lot of help from my parents and friends. It wasn't my ideal structure or location and a significant downgrade in my eyes from the house I lived in as married person. I felt like I was settling. I unpacked what was necessary and stacked the rest of the boxes in the garage to deal with "some other time". Truthfully, I never really moved into this house, not with my heart. Bottom line - I needed a place to live. Period. That's all I saw this place as until recently.
Sitting on the patio having coffee with a dear friend she said to me "Good God Selsor,,,,when are you going to stop treating this place as temporary"? "This IS your effing house. You LIVE here, start acting like it and I suggest you start with these damn weeds". She had a point. The majority of my one acre lot is overgrown with plants ie., weeds, that I have never even watered but they grow like wildfire. Tree stumps and old bike parts. A funky old shed that serves as a black widow farm and practice canvas for my sons graffiti art. Tumbleweeds breed freely here. I have a patio slab but no cover. My wood trim needs to be repainted and I need some electrical work done - and that's just the outside!
Another dear friend who helped me pack my old life into many of those boxes still sitting untouched in my garage suggested that THIS was my reality house. She was right but until recently all I saw was the harsh reality of all the things that weren't right about it. I'm not talking about just simple aesthetics. I do have some serious functional and safety issue that need to be addressed. Basically anything the seller did when flipping this house was half-assed at best. I can't DIY all the problems and to my dismay there is no money tree growing among the weeds.
In my mind this was just a halfway house. I never really intended to STAY. Last night the weight of it all sunk in. Maybe I'm feeling reflective since it's almost New Years. Maybe it's the fact that I had to drive by my old house 4 times yesterday that got me thinking. THAT house was perfect in structure and location but it was not a very, very, very fine house. THAT house holds all the bad memories of my marriage. The lies and broken promises. Hurt feelings and words like knives that we both threw at each other. THAT house remembers all the pain.
THIS house has mostly happy memories. The overjoyed faces of my kids when they realized we could fit our beloved couch in the living room. Movie nights and sleepovers. Lots of "firsts" that are only ours. THIS is the house where my kids will get their driver's licenses - one already has. THIS house sees me entertain friends with a light and happy heart. THIS house is the reality house where we all get to choose what we keep and what we let go of.  THIS house is the one I can afford and lets me still provide them with the extras. THIS is the house that I'm truly so grateful for because at night, all my babies lay their heads down under one roof with me. That'll change sooner than I'd like as they become independent and find their paths in life but THIS is MY house. It has kept us safe and together. It deserves more respect than it's been given. It's time to unpack the boxes, let go of the past and finally move in.