How Cool! Thanks!

Well, it seems I have been given a blog award! The Versatile Blogger Award. Chrystal from "My Morning Music" nominated me! Thanks Chrys! After being a big fan of your blog, I consider it quite the compliment and really appreciate the nod!

Apparently there are things I am required to do once I receive this honor:

1. Thank the award giver. 2. Share seven things about myself. 3. Nominate new award winners and let them know.

Took care of number one above. I will also be making Chrystal her favorite Indonesian Pork Roast and rice pilaf the next time she comes up, with much gratitude!

Seven things, huh? Isn't that some kind of Biblical perfection number or something?

1. I absolutely love music. It is my mood-altering drug of choice on a regular basis. I am a rocker from way back beginning with the Beatles (yes I sat in front of the black and white TV with my brother and watched them on Ed Sullivan), moving through to Def Leppard and Guns and Roses and including more modern groups Nickelback and Third Eye Blind. I love the folk music of the 60s and I am currently on a big James Taylor kick when I want to mellow out. I have been fortunate enough to have raised five very music savvy children who kept me in the loop and introduced me to bands like Depeche Mode, Erasure and the Cranberries (though my kids will tell you that "Dreams" and the yodeling at the end drove me nuts at first... hey, I was a frazzled mom of five...what can I say?).

2. I love doing things with my hands. I remember being really young in my room at home and doing a mosaic of the North Church and listening to Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman. I learned sewing in school (back in the day when it was required)and made most of my clothes through junior high and high school. My mom taught me to knit and to embroider. She and I both learned to crochet when I was in high school and my sister taught me to crosstitch. I am working on a piece right now of four little girls at the beach which reminded me of my four girls. I realized yesterday why I love doing it. It is like a jigsaw puzzle with thread. It is amazing to watch the colors and stitches unfold this beautiful picture. The same can be said for an afghan to knit or crochet or sewing a pretty dress for an adorable baby.

3. I really really really like being home. It restoreth my soul. I am a homebody when it is peaceful. When we were raising our kids, a lot of the time I wanted to get out because of the sheer noise factor! I am eternally grateful for the fact that I married a wandering man. He is as curious about seeing things as I am about reading about things curled up on my couch with a hot cup of coffee and my cat. If it wasn't for him, I would have ended up missing SO many things! Ireland, Austria, Hawaii, Kansas and best of all... Oklahoma!!!

4. I love to dance. And it is very important to me! So much so that I remember telling my friend, Laurie, "I am going to marry a guy who dances!" OK, so I didn't. But I did teach him a bit. He is as comfortable out on a dance floor as I am away from home! This really goes back to the love of music too. I can really be dreading going somewhere (do I detect a theme here?), even as simple as a short meeting, and if I snap on my little iPod shuffle with my music, I am smiling and boogeying all over that bathroom as I put my makeup on and do my hair. It is as if the music makes every single one of my cells sit up and dance! So my feet canNOT be still! I still miss my older girls being home and the fabulous dance parties they had because they let me be the crazy mom out there with them! That was so generous of them... did I thank you guys for that? I heard one time that Michael Jackson had a whole room that he got to go into every day and just dance for two hours solid. I was so envious!!

5. I love to sing but apparently can't hold a tune in a bucket. I sang to my babies when they were little and still sing to my grandbabies. It puts them to sleep! Hey, if I was that bad, wouldn't it make them cry instead of put them to sleep? But referencing #4, when I put my headphones on with my iPod, um, I sing with the music! And my dear husband, Rick, will come around the corner with this big grin on his face. He thinks I am nuts. And cute. But he says I can't sing based upon that. Oh, well, I just think of Julia Roberts in the tub in Pretty Woman (hey, again with the theme) singing along with Prince to "Kiss". She looked like she was having fun and for me that's what singing is all about. Especially ripping down the highway with Boston's More Than a Feeling blaring and singing at the top of my lungs!!! Nothing better than that, baby!!!

6. I love to read. I will never forget my little Chrystal making a new friend on the playground with "Hi, my name is Chrystal, I like to read, do you like to read?" How sweet is that? She never knew how much I admired her courage that day. I read before I went to kindergarten thanks to my mom who taught me phonetically. And I did the same for my kids too. Learning phonetically worked so well with my brainstyle. I love puzzles and each word just seems like a puzzle to me to be figured out (sounded out). I read for pleasure (fiction) when my girls give me a hard enough time and I allow myself the luxury. But mostly I love to read self-help books. My biggest puzzle is me. And though I know there are some in my circle who think I take myself a BIT too seriously, I have learned amazing coping tools and even became a life coach to share this info with others. AND I am still reading... the Bible is a never ending interesting puzzle that has a billion fascinating pieces that the more I read the more I see the bigger picture. Love that.

7. I love football. Now, I cannot even begin to compare my passion for football with my daughter, Chrystal and her husband, Jason. But when Rick and I first got married, it was I that wanted to watch the games on Sunday. He was more passive about it at the time. I have definitely brought him around and it didn't take much. My relationship with my dad was sketchy to say the least, but the one thing we did together (besides fishing) was watch football. I asked him all the questions and he answered. It was our bonding time. So because I understand football, it is a blast to watch. On Superbowl Sunday, it is me with the guys watching the game and hollering "Get 'em!" and the other wives are in the kitchen... oh well! When I was 30 I taught World History and English at a private school in Reseda, CA. I had high school age kids. I will never forget the look on one David Gobauty's face when I started talking about Danny White of the Dallas Cowboys, etc., etc. He didn't believe I really knew anything about football. Ha! Ha! Girls rule!!!!

Sooooo, that is my required 7. As to nominating another blogger and letting them know, I reserve the right to check out some more blogs before I make my choice!

The Old Gray Mare

It was two years ago last January that I embarked on one of the scariest personal journeys of my life. I decided to go gray.

Actually I had been wanting to do it for the previous five years. My husband said go for it over and over again! My color stylist (of course, since I was spending $200 a month with her) didn't want me to "You are way to young for that!", ok so that flattery worked for awhile. My youngest daughter (now 25) told me I would hate it. I guess I believed her. I do have a tendency to jump into things and go "What the heck was I thinking?"

Yet the thought kept haunting me. Years ago, I met this stunning woman with white hair, big blue eyes and four little kids. I thought she was so classy. Marla. In L.A., everyone was fighting the whole aging thing and yet, here she was, way way before her age would warrant it, allowing herself the grace of her real color. On and off through the years since, every time I would see her, I would think "How come she gets to do that?" "Well, she has blue eyes, so she can get away with it" I told myself.

Then there were the silver-tressed models that started cropping up in the fashion magazines and again, I was intrigued. They looked so sure of themselves and so elegant. So real. And I even noticed those with brown eyes like mine! Hmmm, maybe this is more of a possibility than I thought!

Yet it was one movie that sent me over the edge. "Away From Her" with Julie Christie. I have admired her ever since her lovely portrayal of Lara in Dr. Zhivago. If I had to age, my desire was to age with her kind of grace. And in this new movie, she has long silver, grey and white hair... and she still is lovely, complete with wrinkles. I thought "That's it! I am going to do it!"

Backing up a minute, though, I must say that the six months before this moment I had been losing weight and had shed 32 lbs and feeling pretty sassy. This was a key ingredient, I believe, in my having the courage to take this plunge. I took my husband to lunch and let him know what I wanted to do. He was great about it. "The only thing is, babe, I have to start off by cutting my dark colored hair very short. I am not going through months of the skunk." He loves my longer hair but in light of my goal, he was on board.

The first stage was to chop it off to a bob. That was weird. I hadn't had my hair that short since my third baby was born! 30 years ago!! Just getting used to that was strange. But my gray came quickly. That was why I spent so much on coloring it before...it had to be done every two weeks as the hair grew so quickly that I looked like I had white bald spots all over the top of my head. So here they came again. I had my colorist put some blonde streaks in.

Ughhhh, that was awful. And she kept cutting off more of the color as the ugliness was growing out. At one point I felt like I had the head of many colors. The transition felt like it was taking forever. I couldn't wait to get this over with.

Soooooo....

On May 20, 2008, I went into my stylist, Melissa, and said "Cut it off! Give me a Jamie Lee Curtis right now!" She couldn't believe I meant it, even though I had been talking it over with her on other appointments. She said "OK, close your eyes and keep 'em closed until I am done!" So I did. And I could hear the ooohs and ahhs from the other ladies and stylists that couldn't believe I was doing this. And I could feel the air on my scalp! And the tear of the shears. Yikes! I thought! What am I doing?!!!

Melissa said "OK, open your eyes!" I audibly gasped! My hair hasn't been this short since I had hair! What I couldn't believe was how white the sides were... amazing. I had been coloring my hair for 20 years not knowing what was really under there, so this was definitely the chef surprise! But strangely I loved how free I felt and it was so shocking! I started laughing and couldn't wait to go home to show my husband, Rick. As I walked down the hallway to our bedroom after I got home, I could see just the edge of his face as he sat on our bed. His eyes went wider than I'd ever seen them before and he began laughing his head off and rolling on the bed!!! Literally!!! He could not believe I really did it! I think on some level he really admired me for doing it... Because if anyone knows how I feel about my hair, it is the man who has heard me complain and angst about it for the last 38 years! I told him "Hey, babe, we match now! We both have silver hair!" And for quite awhile my hair was actually shorter than his!!!! Too bizarre!

Well, if you have seen Jamie Lee's hair, you know that it is in a billion layers. So now was the growing out process. I think a lot of my friends thought I would leave it short. Um, no. While it is nice to know I have the option to have it short if I wanted it to, I need long hair, period. I have to have enough to put it up when I want to. It's my thing, what can I say? So this part was truly a two year process with a plethora of hairstyles along the way.

And I knew the progress by the utensils I was using. At first, blowing my hair dry was a super cinch and I just used my fingers. Then I graduated to a very small round brush to tame the crazy wild hairs. I remember when I was able to use a curling iron for the first time! Yay! I am getting somewhere! The best day, though, was the first time I was able to use my large round brush! Look how soft and smooth my hair looks! I thought. I was finally coming back to the old me. The one with hair. But wait a minute... was it really the old me?

Old me. Yes, that's what skipped across my brain every once in awhile. Operative word old. Did I do the right thing? I remember how old my face was beginning to look with the darker color. The lighter color seems to have softened the lines. And at 56, my silver-gray hair actually makes my face look younger. Weird, huh? And yet there have been a few things that have changed in my life since I went gray.

Right after I cut it the shortest, I remember going to a wedding and being able to be incognito for the longest time, standing in the back just waiting for people to walk by, smile at me, do a double take and recognize me! It was hysterical! I felt like I got to be someone else for awhile. Who? I couldn't tell you, but it was fun. That has happened a lot!

The reaction from friends and acquaintances has been interesting; as if my doing this says they have to do it as well; that because I say I am doing this to feel more authentic means I think they are a bunch of shallow fakes. That is not true. I was just ready to do this for me. I colored my hair for 20 years and I did it because it made me feel better and when it stopped doing that, I made another choice.

Another reaction that was strange that I noticed was the attention at the grocery store...from all the old guys!!! Ha! When I was younger, I was kinda cute and I got some attention, but that had not been the case for quite awhile. Suddenly I was the gray-haired chick with the young face! Seriously, the "seasoned" guys were coming out of the woodwork! I wasn't sure if I liked it or if it just finally meant I was now officially an old lady. Can you say "Cocoon"?

So there was some paradoxical feelings inside of me. On the one hand I felt SOOOO liberated from the trappings of the color worries (i.e. are my roots showing? Gotta cut those bangs so I can have a little more time before I have to color. What the heck color is that? I thought it was brown, why do I look like Lucy? Why can't somebody give me Ally McBeal haircolor?) It felt good having enough confidence to let go of the whole process.

On the other hand, embracing the gray is also honestly embracing my age and where I am in life. I am 56, mother of five grown children and grandmother to four. And I could be all of that with brown hair too. It just would be trying to prove something that wasn't true anymore. I felt like my color was helping me hide. I hid behind bangs (which I no longer have because I don't have to worry about white roots) and I hid behind longer dark hair. So the combination of being thinner and totally exposed with my white hair was really really scary in a lot of ways.

I gained the weight back. Slowly, but I did. I don't like it but I am more interested in what I am so scared of that I have felt the need to go back into hiding on some level. I even feel sometimes when I see some lady with pretty brown hair, "Maybe I should just go back" but then I remember the process and, knowing myself, snap my thoughts back to reality. There is no going back.

Seeing gray hair on my daughters' heads is sobering as well. Where exactly do I fit anymore? As I go see my dad in the extended care facility needing a hip replacement, I come away feeling young and powerful. Yet tromping up the hill of the Santa Barbara Bowl Saturday night to see the Steve Miller Band, I feel like that "Old Gray Mare" ready for the glue factory! Is it all over for me? I am not young, I am not old... and I have this gray hair. Now what?

Ahhhh, the big "now what"! I am happy in so many ways and still confused as to where I fit. I wonder at my being suprised about that. I have always walked to my own beat and didn't "fit" into the mold of those around me. Yet maybe there are more like me. I saw quite a bit of silvery sassiness at the concert Saturday night. Hey, we can still rock it with the best of them, that's for sure!!!

And speaking of rocking out, my greatest silver-haired heroine is Emmy Lou Harris. Yes, she has class, sass and is truly herself. Maybe that's what has been scaring me, really coming out of the "shoulds" and being the real me, whatever that ends up being!

This old gray mare ... she ain't what she used to be... and thank goodness for that!!

I Got it Bad and That Ain't Good

My dad is sick. He is 81 and like the Energizer Bunny continues to keep on going thru two heart bypass surgeries, a stent, a hip replacement, various infections, a skin condition with the resulting diabetes from the medication for said condition.

He and I have had a rocky relationship. Yet in the past few years, we both have made a semblance of peace. It is what it is. And it is enough. I guess I finally grew up. Sort of. But it has been an interesting week of noticing myself slip back into the little girl who wants daddy's smile of approval; to be the good daughter. Did I say I was 56? Hmm, I guess I am a slow study.

I have three sisters and a brother and along with my mother, we all have kept thinking "this is the big one, Elizabeth," since 1978 when he had his first heart bypass surgery. Time and again, he sits at the brink, looking worse than death in the hospital, and cheating the odds, coming home and standing up in his kitchen making peanut butter toast. I wasn't kidding about the energizer bunny thing!

So here we go again...he fell a couple of weeks ago and has had to have hip surgery to remove fluid and unfortunately had to have a middle toe removed from the diabetes. Visiting him in the hospital this week has been awful. He just keeps looking from bad to worse. It is a helpless feeling to be with someone in that much pain. And the pain meds just made him more grouchy and full of stories he was sure were accurate about crazy nurses, etc. I don't do well with his grouchiness. I never have. I want to just say "Fine, rot here! I am never coming back!" But of course, I do. The feelings have been all over the place... depending on the moment, and of course, his mood. I have dialogues in my head about being compassionate for someone in pain...

Three years ago, the last time he was scary sick, I got it in my head to buy him a little iPod shuffle. I thought, "What would I want if I was alone for long periods without my family and too doped up to read?" (oh, and, by the way, he has also lost the sight in one eye.) I knew it had to be music. The love of music is one of my favorite things my dad and mom passed on to us kids; that and working hard and having a relationship with God. So I bought the iPod as well as music on iTunes from Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis and Anthony Newley; all the music I grew up with and that he loved. He told me one day, I can't remember exactly when, about a song Sinatra had done in the early days that was his favorite. It was called "Mamselle". So naturally that had to be on the Shuffle too. And I found it!

So this week, I went and recharged his Shuffle that had been in some little bag somewhere. Yeah, who is the "little girl" who clicked through the entire shuffle to find "Mamselle" in order to cue it up perfectly to be the first one dad would listen to? Who was she that after a harrowing day doing a billion things, went to the hospital, stopped off in the restroom and freshened her makeup, put lipstick on and brushed up her hair? Could it be that little girl that still wants daddy's smile of approval? Like I said... I am a slow study... We so many times get thrown back into those crazy moments of childhood. Nothing new here I suppose...

I was discouraged to see him in a lousy mood again, but I had a surprise for him. I put on the headphones and watched the smile slide across his face and he began to sing "Mamselle..." Ha! I felt like the best daughter in the world! A miracle worker! Song after song came on and he was singing right along, sometimes I could tell what he was singing and I sang a little with him. "That Nelson Riddle had the best arrangements!" he said just bopping his head back and forth to the music, loving it. Wow. "Music to soothe the savage breast".

But yesterday was a whole different animal. It was late afternoon and Dad was no longer in the hospital but in an extended care center that he will have to be in for a few weeks to rid his body of infection completely. I walked into his room and asked him how he was feeling today, "Isolated!" he barked. Uh-oh... Oscar the Grouch was back. "Do you want to listen to some music, dad?" He said yes so back on went the headphones. But this time it was different. I noticed him singing "I get a kick out of you" and he said as he shook his head "Nobody could do this song better than Fred Astaire! Nobody!" and I noticed his chin starting to quiver. I sat up. The next song came on and he was singing the words "the things we did last summer"... and he cried more... I did not know what to do... do I turn it off?

Then I could hear him singing "My poor heart is sentimental, not made of wood. I got it bad and that ain't good. But when the weekend's over and Monday rolls around, I end up like I start out, crying my heart out. Doesn't love me like I love her, nobody could, I got it bad and that ain't good." By this time, he is barely choking out these heart-wrenching words as he sobs. Then he is shaking his head and saying "I didn't do it right, I didn't do it right." I stood up and took off the headphones and said "Dad, you did, you did." "It wasn't enough...I didn't tell her how I felt" At this point, I am crying too. "Well, you always had a hard time expressing yourself, Dad" "I know, I came from such a hard place, I just couldn't do it.""Did you do the best you could?" " I thought I did..." "Hey, Dad, she stayed around, didn't she?" "It didn't seem like she was really ever there much." All through his tears he said these things and I tried to console him, but he was unconsolable. "I have to tell her! I have to let her listen to this song and then she will know!" he cried. This all felt surrealistic to me. I had never seen this side of him. Though mom had told me this had happened before. He was always so hard, I didn't know what to do. I got him a little calmed down, feigned a bathroom break, walked outside and called mom to come down. She had to, there was no consoling him.

She came in and reassured him. At first he bucked up and wasn't going to say anything! I looked down at his cry-face and said "There is something you want to share with mom, right?" He looked over at her and started to speak and I left them together to talk. When I got back to the room, she was reassuring him of her love and how she knows he loves her and that their whole life has been an adventure soundtracked to the best music in the world and that only he was the guy who "got" the lyrics and she wouldn't have anyone else. He seemed so much better and I kissed him goodnight after putting the shuffle and headphones away in the drawer.

Today when I went to see him he was nearly downright perky. He was ready to do whatever the nurses say so he can get out of there. I asked him if he wanted his music, he said yes and oddly enough, the shuffle didn't work. Hmmm.

Music is cleansing, a mood-altering drug and can take us back to good, bad and ugly times. This mostly grouchy old man taught me that he is as complex and multifaceted as I am. He is still the handsome tan guy who, on warm summer days in the San Fernando Valley while mom and I made a salad and the steaks were on the grill, with the slider wide open, with a beer in one hand and a hose in the other watering the huge backyard, would be dancing silly steps to the Tijuana Brass blaring from the stereo for all the world to hear. And that wasn't bad... in fact that was very very good.