Horse Tails ~ Pat

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady upon a white horse
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
and she shall have music wherever she goes

     The first horse I ever owned  I never rode.  I don't know what possessed my parents to buy her, but to me my dream had come true.  Pat was an older Palomino but not a kids horse.  Apparently my parents didn't understand how to choose a horse for a beginning rider let alone ask for advice.  When I first saw Pat she was at a tumble down, junk strewn ranch.  Old tractors, piles of old fencing, rusty wire coiled and smashed against the barn were scattered around the property.  There were other horses boarded here in corrals along with chickens, goats and cows.  The corral fences were gnawed upon by the horses over the years giving them a look that made you wonder if the horses could bust threw them easily if they wanted.  The feed troughs were in the same condition made from old plywood.  You could hear the banging of hooves against them by the horses and goats waiting for their next feeding.  

     Pat was a tall mare and in my eyes she looked like Roy Rogers's horse Trigger.  My imagination soared thinking of our future rides together.  She walked around lazily with chickens running from under her hooves as she came towards us.  I had a bag of carrots in one hand and a carrot at the ready in my other hand.  My ten year old height gazing up at this huge horse while I smiled from ear to ear.  Her muzzle eagerly reaching out for the carrot which she bit ever so gently and immediately reached for the remaining half.  Then she blew out and breathed me in, looking for another carrot.  I reached up with my empty hand to pet her forehead down towards her nose.  That was what I did with Pat.   My stepfather would bring me every once in awhile for me to feed carrots to her.


     We eventually moved her to a ranch on Old Stage Road out in the rolling countryside of Salinas at the base of the Gabilan Range mountains.  We had a man ride her to the new ranch who appeared to be the only one who could ride her.  Here she had a large open pasture to run on with and a couple of donkeys for friends.  Out here there were Red Wing Blackbirds singing on the telephone wires and on the fences.  You could hear the hum of those wires so distinctly. It was so quiet and peaceful.   It was a wonderful place to run around on even if I didn't get to ride.   I was still taking riding lessons just down the road never knowing that I would not get to sit on her back.  


     It wasn't long after that she took to escaping her new home.  A bit of a Houdini and a jumper.  Maybe it was because she had room to run around in without obstacles that encouraged her to take flight over the fence.   I would hear about this from time to time since the property owners would call and tell us they had to go and bring her back.  Finally the suggestion came that we should hot wire the fence line.  What a job.  My stepfather and I went to the hardware store and bought bags of  porcelain insulators, wire and of course the  charger.  We spent the day out there with him putting the system together.   I ran around just happy to be in the country.  We figured this would work.  She wouldn't escape and for a time she didn't.   Same day that he is working and I am running around pretending to be a horse I guess, I get too close to her while she is running around.  Blam!  I am down on the ground in a split second gasping for air for what seems like forever till I can inhale.  I have been kicked in the diaphragm and the air knocked out of me.  I lay there not knowing what happened.  I couldn't yell so that my stepfather could hear me.  At last I got up.  Pat had resumed grazing without a bit of guilt as to what she had done.  I learned a valuable lesson when running around with a horse running around as well.  I had learned not to walk behind a horse at my riding lessons but like a child you forget lessons you learn.


     For her next trick she somehow fell into the septic tank at the ranch.  How she did this unclear to me.  The septic tank was not in the pasture but near the house on the property.  Turned out to be a good place for her to do this since it made it easier for when a tow truck had to be called to get her out.  Can you imagine when the tow truck driver arrived to find out what needed to be done?  Thankfully it all went well.  She wasn't thrashing or getting out of control.  She was just stuck.  Smelly but unhurt, she was rescued from the tank.    I think my parents were getting to wonder what they had gotten themselves into by acquiring this horse.  The owners of the property had to be tired of this mare who did nothing but get into trouble.  A suitable buyer was found soon thereafter and that was the end of my having a horse for the time being.  It didn't stop me from wanting another one though.  I kept up my longing and vocal wishes to my parents.  I had hope that they would give in if I just was patient and persistent.  


     


     

My Big Brother

     My brother is five years older than I am.  We shared a room together till I was in second grade.  Even still I spent plenty of time with him after we had our own rooms.  He was there for his little sister and I looked up to him.  I may have played with dolls but I was more happy being a little tomboy.   Maybe that is why he wasn't mean to me.  Maybe I was more like a little brother.  When we shared a bedroom together it was done in a boy style.  We had a trundle bed of rustic blonde wood with a matching dresser.  The prints on our bedspread and curtains were a large plaid of dark colors.  There was a rocker as well.  Nothing girly in that room.


     One birthday Gene received as a gift a model of Frankenstein.   After he put it together he set it in on our dresser.  I was scared of that model with the red eyes and creepy face.  I felt like it was watching me.  It gave me nightmares staring down at me in my bed.  It later was placed on the top shelf of our closet where the door could be closed.  More of the toys in the room were of his which I didn't mind, like model airplanes and cars.


     He taught me many board games that we played together.  I don't remember him getting mad at me if I didn't understand the game.  The only game I had trouble with and didn't enjoy playing was Stratego.  I just didn't get it or enjoy it.  Another game he did was to set up playing cards at the end of our hall like houses which he could even get to go two stories high.   Once the cards were set he would go back aways and shoot them down with rubber bands.  He taught me how to do this as well.  Simple times together.  


     We both liked anything cowboy.  I was into anything that involved cowboys because of the horses they rode.  I loved horses!  Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger and Zorro were a big hit with us.  He had several cowboy birthday parties where we would get dressed up with cowboy hats and boots.  Our little 45 record collection of music in our room was country tunes which I only wish I still had.  Roy Rogers and Dale Evans being my favorite.  


     To me my brother was my protector.  As long as he lived at home he seemed to look out for me.  I didn't always like that but he took on the big brother role with purpose.  He was a focused student and always did well in school.  He was actively involved with the youth group at our church and he enjoyed  singing  with the "Up With People" group.  He played piano for awhile and then went on to playing guitar.   He played baseball, did swim team for the high school and also was big into Boy Scouts.  He and our stepfather spent hours building model airplanes which then they would fly.  To me he could do anything and do it well.   I on the other hand failed with piano, struggled with school, was bored with youth group at our church, and didn't do swim team let alone know how to swim.  I somehow lived in his shadow.   I didn't resent him though at all.  I did wish however that someone would notice my interests like they noticed his.  When Gene wanted to learn how to fly sailplanes the whole family would drive to Fremont so he could do this.  Yet only Bill, my stepfather, would go when I took horseback riding lessons.  My mother never went. 

     When my brother was accepted into the Air Force Academy after high school I lost my protector.  He left in the summer after graduation and never moved back home or to California after that.  His visits were scheduled like leaves from the Military.  Not long or frequent.  My parents paid little attention to me but rode on the coat tails of pride in their son being accepted into such a prestiges school.  I had hit the rough, rebellious age of 13 and wasn't exactly a happy teen.  Another year and half later my parents marriage ended.  Another man left my life.  My brother while not abandoning us was out of my life due to his commitment of duty with the Air Force.   Bill left us and my life without a glance back.  I was left with my mother and grandmother but most of the time I was just left alone. My grandmother visited her sister often and my mom went back to work.  We lived in an apartment in a town I hated.  All I had was my horse.  Thank God I had my horse.  I cried into his neck and mane many a time.   My lifeline to normalcy was hanging out at the barn at the fairgrounds daily.  I forgot about family life the way it use to be.  I forgot about my brother except for when he could visit.


     Life did eventually improve.  Those rough years past on to better days for all of us.  A new marriage for my mom, then my brother married and then I married as well.  There were times we didn't always agree and I am sure there will be more times we won't but I do know I have a big brother who is in my life.  He has a different way of seeing things than I.  I react with a lot of emotion whereas he is more analytical.  He is still learning about the little sister he left when he went off to college.  I changed a lot during his years away as well he did too.  He left me just as I was becoming a young woman.   We each carried our pains of what happened when Mom divorced Dad and when she and Bill divorced.  His more different than mine.  He became more devout as a Christian and I became less so.  We each have a large loving family, he with three boys and I with three girls and then my one son.  We both hit the jackpot with spouses and have stayed married to them, he 34 years and I 32 years.  I believe we both had the same desire with our marriages, that we would marry for life and have stability for our children.  We both have moved around a lot when it comes to homes yet we have each lived the longest in our current homes.  The best thing my mom did do was see to it that our families got together once a year since my brother lived out of state.  It was a way for our children to get to know each other and to reconnect as a family.  Looking back I appreciate that more and more.  For all the difficulties of her as our mother, on those trips we were able to build good memories.  I don't know had she not planned this how often it would have happened that we would all be together.  


     My brother and I are bound together just like most siblings, yet we each carry the confusion, the mystery, and of present the aging of our mother. Because I live near my mom I have become the liaison of her health.  Her denial of her health makes every detail of wanting to help her difficult.  How could we be her children I have asked myself.  We who love without conditions to our family, who support our children and their interests, who want our children to not have secrets or taboo topics with us.  I wonder what personality traits are carried on from our parents at birth.  Am I like my dad?  Am I like my mom?  I don't think I am either but I am choosing to be me.  Not someone I can't identify with.  Does my brother wonder this too?  I can see my big brother when we are little kids.  We may not have been close in age but he took the time to be loving towards me.  One of the sweet memories is of him trying to teach me to drive his brand new Firebird with a stick shift.  He took me to the mall's parking lot when it was quiet and no other cars around.  So patiently he tried to teach me yet I stalled it out constantly.  He never got mad or said forget it.  He just was there, calmly letting me learn while we shared time before he went back to school.


     

Ice and a Needle: Southern Rule #2

     The ice on my earlobe is dripping down my neck and the pain on my lobe makes me pull the ice away.  Heidi is telling me to keep the ice on there so it will get numb.  I put it back on the front of my earlobe and every so often switch to the back.  We're laughing and talking like any 13 year old's would.   About boys and friends.   

     Here I am at one of the coolest girl's house from school.  She has invited me to spend the night and I am just feeling so lucky.  Her bedroom is huge and she has her own bathroom.  Her bedroom is twice the size of my parents bedroom!  Heidi is beautiful.   Long dark brown hair with these big brown eyes.  Really white teeth and an incredible smile.  Her family doesn't seem to hover over her perhaps because she is the youngest with brothers.  I feel like the ugly duckling next to her but I am so happy she has invited me over.

    Heidi wonders if I want my ears pierced.  I tell her my mom won't let me.  She asks why, whats wrong with pierced ears?  Heidi offers to pierce them.  My mom doesn't need to know.  I can hide them.   It doesn't take me long to say yes.  Heidi goes and gets some ice and brings it back to her room.  We have music playing on the record player and she is telling me how she will be doing it.  I need to keep the ice on my ear till they feel really numb.  She finds a sewing needle and some matches.  She is telling me that once my ear is numb that she will light the match and run the needle through it.   That's to sterilize it.  Then she will poke the needle through my ear.  Once that is done she will leave the needle in for a short time and then put an earring on afterwords.  

     Heidi has lots of of earrings.  Long dangling earrings with small beads that look so hippy like.  I want to be a hippy.  If this will get me closer to that status then I will do it.  I want to be cool.  I want to dress like the rest of the cool girls.  She finds some small posts that I will wear for a month till my ears have healed then I can wear any kind of earrings I want after that.  

     I think my ear is quite numb now.  She has marked my ear with a pen so she will know where to put the needle through.  I am a bit scared as I don't like needles.   Then she does it.  I do cry out but then she is done.  My ear feels hot and is pounding but not as bad as the numb feeling.  I don't know how many ears Heidi has pierced but she doesn't seem to think anything of it.  We have to wait now for my other ear to be numb.  She puts the post in the ear while we wait.  I can't believe that now I too will have pierced ears.  All my girlfriends have pierced ears and none of their mom's minded.  What is the big deal?

     The next day when I go home I walk in the door hoping to not see my mom.  I wear my long hair parted down the middle and covering my ears quite well.   So far so good.  It's not like my mom and I sit face to face much or talk if I can help it.  Except for dinner where we all sit together.  The first day I am fine but the second day at dinner I am caught.   She wants to know what I have on my ears.  I tell her there is nothing there.  She persists and then pulls my hair away.  The posts are plain to see.   She is livid.  I am told to take them out, right now!  I am sent to my room, which is a common event at my age.  When all else fails send Ellen to her room.  Grounding was a weekly deal as well.  My mom must have eyes everywhere!   

     I come up with a great idea.  When I leave the house I put the earrings right back in.  When I am home I take them out.  Heidi tells me it will take longer to heal taking the earrings off and on like that and to use alcohol to keep them clean so they don't get infected.  So this is what I do.  This plan works for a week till one day I come home from school and I forgot to take the earrings out.  Busted!  I said she was livid before, well now she is furious with me.  My lesson is I can't fool my mom and get away with it.  I should know this but I keep trying to outwit her.  I stop wearing the earrings and just keep asking her when I can get them pierced.  If I do this long enough maybe she will give in.

     Southern rule about pierced ears.  Pierced ears are what cheap women do.  I guess she is telling me that my friends with pierced ears are cheap women in the making.  No proper young lady wears them.  Clip on earrings are fine and I can wear those.  They don't make cool earrings that clip on!  What hippy wears clip on earrings?  This is the logic I received from my mom.  Looking back at it I can understand her feelings that way based on her upbringing.  She wasn't seeing that styles and opinions had changed or attitudes towards them as well.  For her there was no reasoning of this issue.  When I was 15 she finally relented and let me get them pierced.  It was done by the doctor she worked for who did it in his office.  Yes, at that time you went to a professional to have it done.  Anyone else and there would be problems.  If you look at my ears you can see where Heidi pierced my ears as the holes never fully closed.  It bothers me that the doctor didn't do it in the same place or check to see if an earring would go through the first holes.  My victory was won and proved that one could have pierced ears and not be a floozie.  My mom never did come to approving of them but she stopped arguing with me on this.  Of course I was allowed to only wear small hoops of gold.  Not the kind that dangle.  That came soon enough though.

Southern Rules

     I could never have survived living in the south.   I have lived in the very liberal state of California almost all my life and I would have broken every Southern rule that existed in the unwritten book every good Southern girl knows forwards and backwards.  They were taught all this from day one when they were born.  From the moment my mom was picked up and held she became the Southern Belle that one reads about.   It is not to say my mom didn't do something wrong in her youthful days.   Yes, I am sure she too tested her Mama and Daddy but she did it with a sweet Southern smile when she apologized. 


     When I was a young teen in the 70's my mother became   overly concerned about who I was having as a friend.  I knew that when I brought someone over the first thing she would say after she would say "Hello" would be "And who are your people?".   None of my friends could understand this "Who are your people" deal.   What does that mean?  The next thing she would say as my friend would look at me in question not knowing what to say would be "And what does your father do?".  Now that they could answer.  


     For some reason these are important answers to know.  It tells a lot about that person as to "Who are your people".   It means where do they come from or are they from a long line of old family from the south.  I have been in a department store ladies room and my mom would hear someone with a Southern accent and she would ask "Are you from south?".   Nine times out of ten they would be from some southern state.  If they were from Alabama that would be exactly what would be asked after that.   "Who are your people?".   I would listen to my mom ask "Do you know so and so?".   Then they would ask "Do you know the so and so's from Montgomery?".  I was amazed at the connections of the Southern relations!  There was always some family they could connect with or know.


     I can only assume that where you come from is a very important thing to know.  It must be like what station in life you are from.   Pity someone from the wrong area or wrong family.  I never learned the purpose of knowing this and the need to ask this with my friends.  I would usually get around to asking in a conversation where a person lived.  It just didn't sound like the way my mom would do it.  Hers was said in such an important way.  Mine was casual but it was more of a way to develop a friendship and I certainly didn't ask the personal way of "Who are you people"!


     The rudest question was  "What does your father do?".  What kind of thing is that to ask someone?  Apparently that too is an important thing to know.   I guess if your father did not have in important job they may not be a suitable friend to have.  I for the life of me cannot see the importance of that.  Yet to my mom that was what she asked.  Believe me she did try to steer me away from some of my friends upon finding them less than what she wanted for her daughter.  The higher vocation one's parent was the happier she would be.  She would be so polite and gratuitous  when they came over.  Without asking me she would invite them to do something with the family.  This was my friend, not hers!  She made it hard to want to bring friends over with her inquisitiveness and suspiciousness.  My friends thought her stiff, formal and she made them uncomfortable.  If I was not to bring a friend over and she had not met them then she would have to talk to their parent on the phone before I went over.  


     The Southern ways never leave you even if you move away.  Her southern accent did disappear oddly.  I can't remember her having it while I was growing up.  My Nan's stayed till she passed away.  My mom tried hard to instill her Southern upbringing in me and some I do have and I do like.  These though were the top of the list of insane.

The Meaning of Family

     The definition of family is 1:  a group of individuals living under one roof and usually under one head (household)   2:  a group of persons of common ancestry (clan)  3:  a people or group of peoples regarded as deriving from a common stock (race)  4:  a group of people united by certain convictions or a common affiliation (fellowship).


     I have struggled with the understanding of family most of my life.  My mother married three times.  (Household had several heads to live under.)  Most of the family was of common ancestry.  (Our clan was dominate of a Southern Heritage of unwritten but strictly obeyed rules.)  We were all of one race.  (That would be Southern.)  As for the "united by certain convictions or common affiliation" well, I tested that out most of my teen years.  (Fellowship was hard when you have father-figures that changed three times.  It doesn't help fellowship either when you question the female head of household over insane reasons why I couldn't do most things I wanted to do when I was age 13 to 15.)


     My birth father I have scant memory of.   Few photographs as well.   He was in the Air Force and sadly he was stationed away from us during a time when it possibly could have changed the outcome of my parents relationship.  Possibly not though as well.  After their divorce I rarely saw him and heard less from him.  I don't honestly know why.  Seeing him the few times I did brought me to tears and confusion over who and what he was to me.   He was my dad.  I knew that.   But what memories or stories did I have of him in my life?  I could think of none.  When I was in my senior year and having turned 18 he suddenly wanted to be a part of my life.  It shook me to the core.  I was afraid of him because of not knowing him.  My love and I went to meet him in San Francisco at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, a neutral spot I selected.  I could hardly stop from shaking because a part of me longed to have my father in my life but a huge part of me was angry that after all this time NOW he wanted to be a part of my life.  Like he could just pop in and we could be a father - daughter unit.   I explained to him that what I wanted was to get to know him.  What his favorite things to do were, what hobbies he had, what he did with his new family.  We parted with the agreement of him not calling me but to write to me.  I was not yet ready to open my life to him at that point.


     It still haunts me that we never moved onto the phone calls.  He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1983.  He respectfully honored me all those seven years by not calling me except for a few times when I called him.  I am saddened that he never got to see his first two grandchildren except in photographs.  I think that I am like him in more ways than I realize in that he too regretted not having tried harder to see my brother and I when we were growing up.  My father died on his sailboat, alone, but doing a hobby that he enjoyed.   A hobby he never told me about.   How is it that I never found this out?


     Bill was my first stepfather.  He was a handsome man if you like the tall dark type.  He was a ladies man through and through.  He really didn't parent me as my mother took that role one hundred percent.  Bill was the nice guy with the smile and laugh.   I never had an attachment to him like my brother.  He didn't do much with me except to drive me to my horse or just him living under the same household.  They lasted nine years and then he was gone.  I was surprised how his being out of my life left me without any sadness.  Maybe it was because I had my own personal life that was in need of living.  Having been uprooted from my friends to move to a place I commonly called "a hell hole" I really didn't care about anyone except my horse and our dogs.  I never saw or heard from him again.  


     The man who left his mark in my life was Rock.  He was there for this tribe of three women in a calm and constant way.  My Grandmother thought he was too old for my mom as there was a 20 year difference in age.  She liked him alright but wasn't sure if this was a match for her daughter.  She proceeded to go visit family in the south for awhile and let what would happen happen.  Did she think it would end?  It didn't.   My mom and Rock flourished.   My mom's Southern charm worked magic and before long they were married.   Rock had his own children and then he had me.  We became a part of the same fellowship of family.  We sailed on his boat and skied together.  It was through him I met my love.  He was an amazing Papa to his grandchildren.   There was nothing about him I didn't love and with all my heart wished that he had been my real father.   I preferred calling him Papa than Rock as I felt it was my way of defining him more as my father.  He alone could quiet my mom's stormy behavior towards me.   When he passed away after twenty-four years of marriage I knew it would be a rough sea to sail without him.  He was a gentleman unlike any I have ever known.  Honest, kind, loving, artistic, wine lover, food lover, interested in any new gadget and he never stopped learning if there was something to learn.   He and my mom were a special couple that many looked on as meant for each other or were "The Couple".  For me he was what it meant to have a father.  I felt secure in his gentle bear hug.  His short phone calls to ask about the kids or my love and I.  Going against doctors orders and going on roller coasters with us and laughing the whole time.  His laugh, his smile, his berets, his ascots, him.


     So what is family?  I certainly have had an odd arrangement.  I have more though.  I have left out the part that really is on my my mind of late.  My father had two children with the wife he married after my mom.  Yes, I have two half siblings.  I met them once a couple of years after my father passed away.  An odd visit as I was still so young that I really didn't know what to say or do with them when my father's wife called to visit.  Elizabeth and Matt.  I wanted to know what they knew about my father that I didn't get to know.  What was he like as a father?  What did they do together?   Yet here they were fatherless as I had been.  Looking at it now I wonder what memories as adults they have about him.  They too missed all the years when you remember the most about a life.  Do they have a foggy memory of what they think happened when he was alive?  Does their mother tell them about him and what kind of person he was?  I wonder do they wonder about me like I do about them?  I want to know them.   In some scary way I want to know them.  Then a part of me is afraid of rejection.  Why would they want to know me and if they did why have they never looked for me?  I mean I have tried to look them up from time to time without avail.  Will my life go by never knowing them, they who are a part of my father and me?  Do they resemble him?  Or me?  Just a little bit?  What is family?   I see my life with my love and our children and feel so much.   I feel so much....I feel so much I ache with the encompassing love I feel.  I feel like I can't tell them enough or show them enough of my love.  My consistency of love that I want them to know, I need them to know.  Loss makes you feel this.  As my life moves on I am awash with the swells of love that roll over me, like when Papa would take us out on his boat.  

Christmas Wishes

     Christmas wishes when I was a child...I wish I could remember all the different ones I dreamt about.  Thoughts of Santa who would be coming to my house.   Would I hear the reindeer on the roof?  Those pretty prancing reindeer with the jingling bells on their harness, would I wake up to see them?  How would Santa slide down our chimney?   Did he get smaller on the way down?  How did he go back up?  He was magical, that could be the only way he could do all that he did in just one night.

      Looking out the living room window, searching the sky to see if I could spot Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.   Our news channel would say where Santa was in the sky.   As he would get closer to our town my mother would tell me it was time for bed.   Santa wouldn't come till I was sound asleep.   Off I would run to my bed.   I would hurry to fall asleep so that I wouldn't jinx him coming.  

     Here's wishing that Santa makes some of your wishes come true. Mine this year would be peace on earth.  How timeless that wish is...still.   

    Merry Christmas to all!

     

Reflection

  
  I was looking out the window when I noticed my reflection looking back at me.  It made me think of when I was growing up and feeling uncertain of myself.  That feeling that I was not pretty enough compared to the girls with the peaches and cream complexion while mine was covered with bumpy teen skin.  Or the awkwardness of my chubby child body during my grade school years.  I had a hard time in grade school.  I dreaded having to do anything at the chalkboard where my back would be to the class, trying to answer a math equation or an English breakdown of a sentence.  The feel of all the eyes of my classmates watching and waiting for a correct answer or a wrong answer.  If it was wrong then I would have to go back to the front and be subjected to the class and teacher doing it with me.  I feared the times that my teacher would assign us to mesmerize a poem or read a report we had to write in front of the class.  P.E. was terrible as I was one of the those in the last pick line-up.  What a cruel decision for those teachers to set the popular girls to choose who they wanted on their teams.  You wait in a line as one by one the favorites were picked first, laughing and smiling, while I cringed to see the unhappy face they would make when the last of us were chosen.  


     Nicknames haunted me.  My mom use to call me Ellie which wasn't awful but when kids at school took to calling me Ellie the Elephant during my chubby stage it hurt.  Those taunts don't leave your memory.  In my early teen years I was called PT, which stood for Pyramid Tits, as I had nipples that stood out but no boobs.  Pretty insulting for a young teen girl.  I hated being called Ellie and my mom did stop calling me that.  It's a shame a nickname could evolve into a dreaded name as Ellie is a sweet name.  PT faded away thankfully.  


     That reflection followed me through most of my first 18 years.   I felt so ill equipped to participate in conversations.  I didn't feel educated enough or confident in what I could say.  While dating, my love brought out the best in me.  He encouraged me to make eye contact when speaking and to try to engage in conversations.  I found comfort in his genuine interest in me and who I was.  I had an overpowering mother who had a tendency to make me not feel good about myself.  I didn't dress the way she wanted, I didn't have friends she wanted me to be friends with, I didn't have the brains like my brother or the talents he had with sports and extracurricular activities.  When my love came along she really liked him.  It was like suddenly she saw I was there!  She still didn't appreciate the person I was or take interest in my pursuits but for once she talked to me like the young woman I was becoming. 


     I still can see the reflection only now I see the person I am is on the right side.  She is not the one trapped in the image on the other side of the glass though at times she tries hard to come out and take my place.   I still listen more than I talk and I do love being behind the camera rather than engaging in conversations many times.  I enjoy watching a good conversation going on, hearing the laughter, or raised voices of determination in their talk.  I always have learned much by listening.  I appreciate my quiet side who doesn't feel I need to engage in every conversation.  I tend not to put my foot in my mouth.  I listen more with my heart and try hard not to say what may hurt but to say what I feel that is more loving.  It is a can be a struggle to not say the wrong thing when you feel angry or are in a bad mood.   But I keep trying.  I want to look at myself and know that I am honest of my intentions and that I don't bring the hurtful words from my past out to my loved ones who don't deserve them.   I want my actions to be of loving open arms and that the return towards me are as open, loving and honest.  My struggle is that I take too much personally.  It is hard to let the vain, hurtful, dishonest words roll off me like drops of water that can evaporate from my heart.  Yet when I do it affects me in such a rush of peace and joy that I believe it helps when the next time those words come my way.