tell me

I have a vibrant love affair with change. I get bored with frightening ease. I don't pay attention to that many things for that long because I'm afraid I'm missing something else. Must shift the attention so I don't lose a moment over there, let me tiptoe to see. I like to have ideas and thoughts and share them with people and hope that they take flight. And then I like to go about my way to something else.

I have a couple of uncles. When I was a kid, one of them used to have a trick for getting me to calm down in my hyper-extended fury of doings. He would gently touch his thumbs and pointer fingers together, making somewhat of a Hershey Kiss-shaped triangle, and he would say in a slow breath, "Mellow." I also had a teacher who forbade me from eating sugar.

For someone who moves around a lot, I do actually listen. I like to listen. And I'm highly impressionable. So I took the mellow very seriously, confident that it had an actual impact on my vibes. It's a strange mix of superstition and, even in this, a want to be different in five minutes. I don't have to be hyper all the time, that would get old. I can be chill, too. I can be anything for a little while.

The older I get, the more intentional I am about directing the frantic me into appropriate channels, and the greater desire I have to work on things until they are at a seeming state of "done." Since I have become a mother, this re-routing of energy has become more important, because I want my daughter to be able to focus on something. Like homework (which I almost never did). I want her to be able to be satisfied sitting still and dwelling on a problem without drifting off into contexts and connections. At least I think that's what I want. I'm not at all certain what she has in mind for herself. She may have other ideas.

I place so much value on the things that I can't or don't do. If I can do it, it must not be important. I have tried to talk myself out of this logic, but that is something I'm really not good at. Because I will listen to everyone before I listen to myself. This probably stems as much from a desire to make people happy as it does to change. Whichever comes first in that equation, I'm not sure. Another post another time. The point is I see other people being focused. Doing math. Keeping a really clean house. I think about the things I am good at: change and listening. Following orders which leads to change, even if it's becoming someone's vision of what you should be. When I was in labor, the nurse commented on how perfectly I did exactly what she told me to do, causing my husband to say, "She would be great in the Army."

There's a line in a movie (always points if you know which one). A woman is introducing her boyfriend to all her friends and the dialogue goes something like, "This is Jack. He's an artist, but right now he works at a bank." "This is Charlene, she's in real estate, but she's really a dancer." After several of these exchanges, the boyfriend says this:

"Let me ask you something; why is it all your friends are on their way to becoming somebody else?"

In those words I sit, anxious but peeking around the corner of the phrase. So wonderful to dream and imagine who I am going to be when I grow up. So frightening to wonder that I am not yet somewhere I might be. I could, and probably will, do this for the rest of my life. But I will sit still, making the mellow sign, and tell myself who I am as though I have traits locked firmly to my every action and blink, that are with me even when I'm being a good soldier. If I could choose who I am and what I would do in a future yet-to-be-determined, these things, I would take them with me. The me who can be someone else but will show you how to make the mellow sign. The me who wants to hear what you have to say and is so interested in you, for real. The me who asks questions to understand and remembers what you said the next time I see you. Who wants to look at pictures of people I have never met because you want to show them to someone, and I feel lucky. And it is this me who daydreams with you on the cloud of your choice, about the person you will be someday, too.