My Eight Shot

I considered starting a few different blogs today, in hopes that I might be able compartmentalize all of the schizophrenic pieces of me that are out there in cyber space, but each time I tried to start one, I got stuck in the “About Me” section.

For some reason I flashed to my senior year in college when I was reading Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I remember getting totally wrapped up in discovering my wild, intuitive, feminine self via her stories. I conveyed my excitement to my dad over the phone and he said, “Kelly, women who run with the wolves don’t have jobs or money,” which made me laugh out loud and, today, made me realize that “WHO I AM” lies somewhere between fantasy and reality, spirituality and practicality.

I used to give my photo students an assignment that asked them to turn in eight photographs that specifically told me about their life experiences. The photos had to be specific and unique, meaning NO one else in the room could share their story. For example, they could not create an image about soccer just because they played soccer (because lots of kids play soccer). I gave them an example about me: When I was eight, I was bit by a black, German Shepherd names Ferocious. Students caught on right away and soon my desk was filled with personal, hilarious, sad, and tawdry details about the lives of kids who were strangers to me just a week earlier.

And yet, I cannot remember even ONE of those kids today. I can’t even remember a single photograph.

So does that mean why bother? Does that mean I should leave the “About Me” section blank? Choose a different blog template? To just live day to day, to go through the motions of breakfast, lunch, dinner, kids, homework, bed, maybe a movie here and there without filling in the ABOUT ME BOX terrifies me, so I will tell you eight things about myself. Maybe, if I’m courageous enough, photos will follow.

  • I live in a crappy house that has good bones. Each room has mismatched, hand me down furniture and an unfinished project. It’s 1300 square feet, which if you divide by its six persons and one animal, each being is pretty much allotted 186 square feet. It is currently driving me mad with anxiety and disgust. I want to throw everything out on the front lawn and start over. My perfect house has a very wide hallway with a tricycle in it. Art lines its sun filled walls. Plants live.
  • I hate vanilla ice cream. I include this in my eight because I just asked my husband to bring home a chocolate malt and he brought me vanilla ice cream. I like it with cake, I suppose, but I don’t really like cake either, and anyway, he did not bring me cake.
  • I am a dreamer, which means the song Rainbow Connection makes me cry.
  • When I was a junior in high school I told my dad that I believed I was more of a writer than an artist and then I went to art school. I rarely made art there and instead fell in love with a man who still goes out for ice cream runs at ten PM and, even if he brings back the wrong thing, he’s still my person.
  • I am happiest hosting an intimate dinner party in Autumn, surrounded by really real friends, laughter, stories, a fire, thoughts that fade and linger, and pie.
  • I am unhappiest in summer when I feel compelled to do something “outside,” and “outside” is filled with many of the things I like least of all. This may change one day if I ever live in a house that has air conditioning and if I can wear clothes that are single digit in size. 
  • I think I used to be driven and then somewhere along the line, that drive stalled and I got distracted by things like the Gene Simmons Family Jewels TV show. Sometimes I feel like I have lost myself in that distraction. I see glimmers of it and then it’s time to do the laundry or rock the baby or sign something.
  • There is a lot more of me that even I don’t know yet, a life still to unwind, but if I look back at the tapestry I have so far and beyond the ugly furniture, I see four beautiful children, whom I helped create and right now I am so caught up in their lives, so fully wrapped up in their details that I wonder if I will even begin to know who I am once they have all left me. For now, I am happy to be the only mom at Target with a shopping list that reads: zit cream, Axe body spray, diapers. The distance between my high school newbie and my newborn baby should keep me in my own skin for some time to come. Maybe then, I’ll run with the wolves.