He Still Thinks I'm Beautiful

It has been one of those weeks.  It should have been grand - we had a four day weekend last weekend, but I can't say it was the best ever.  Bell spent the entire weekend feverish and congested.  The fever is gone, but she hasn't really felt good all week - grouchy, still congested, no energy.  If there is nothing to whine about, she has invented something.  Last night I threatened to make her sleep in the well house with the dogs if she didn't hush.  It was an idle threat, but my headache and I had reached the end of our coping strategies. She was grousing because she wanted my bedroom to be hers.  I have no idea where my eight year old went because I have lived with a four year old all week.

Maybe it just one of those weeks.  I am not sure if it is too much screen time while I try to get my work done on the ipad and watch the test takers or if it is the flickering lights of someone else's classroom (I have been administering state tests all week), but I have come home with a lovely headache and a desire for a bottle of wine for supper everynight.  It should be noted that I settled for a glass and some advil rather than the whole bottle.  I am on single parent  duty this week.

But you know what?  It is Friday.  I will only be testing one day next week and better yet, Jack will be home in a few days.  I have missed him more than usual this week.  He headed out a day early this time and we have had a wonky internet connection that kept us from facetiming.  We have chatted on the phone, but it isn't the same.  We at least managed some titilating instant messaging one night, but some nights he was still  driving when I went to bed.  Then this morning as I was sitting here scanning the students and their computer screens, this message popped up on my phone:  "Have I told you lately that you are more beautiful now than when I met you?"  This man can still just make me melt. It is gratifying to know that the man I am still absolutely smitten with is still smitten with me.

Because he is married to me, I know he is supposed to ignore that bits of me that are not so perky any more and the stretch marks - after all, it was his kid that caused them.  I know he is supposed to know that he is aging right along with me, but I really don't think he notices these pretty obvious flaws. I wasn't quite 21 when I met Jack.  Some flaws have surfaced between then and my current 38.  I don't think I had often  felt beautiful until after we married, and then it still took him years to convince me.  But I think it has nothing to do with how I look or don't look.  I think perhaps it has more to do with inner confidence, with freedom to be me.  To be sure, there is power in knowing I am appealing to Jack.  To be thought of as sexy gives me the ability to be sexier.  I just took a lot of convincing.

When we are young, most of us are too inexperienced to understand that we who we are and how we carry and see ourselves can be just as powerful as the package we come in.   I used to be bottled up tight, trying to be everything I was expected to be and locking in the parts that didn't seem to fit.  I still have to be those things to an extent.  My profession does have certain standards and I certainly have standards for myself, but other things . . . well, maybe I am finally old enough to let my hair down and not worry quite as much.  Before, I was trying too hard and hadn't learned to laugh yet, certainly not at myself. I am finally old enough to get that my quirkiness and odd ideas and smarts are okay instead of just weird.  It doesn't mean that I am suddenly not shy or clumsy.  It just means I am at peace with it while finding things I really like about  myself.

I am surrounded everyday by kids who ought to be in their prime of life, 16 and 17 year olds who are beautiful and smart, some shy, some popular, some a mess, some living in a mess.  They have no idea that while I would trade my not so pert body for theirs, I have no desire to go back to youth.  My kids were asking who I went to prom with when I was their age.  They still don't believe me that I went alone because I was the girl who simply did not get asked out.  I am not exactly sure what they see me as, but they cannot connect the me they know to the me I once was.  One student said they see me as self-assured, a little goofy,  and comfortable with my quirks.   That is okay - this me is much more comfortable in my own skin, comfortable enough to enjoy being beautiful to someone and all that it entails.  I will take that over 18 and pert but awkward anyday.


(And the moral of all of this ruminating on beauty is that we should make sure that those around really know how amazing they are; we should tell them and show them and tell them again until they know it too, lest they waste too much time trying to be someone else.)

Farewell

Yesterday, I sat in Davis Hall  soaking in this farewell that Misti orchestrated, wishing with part of me that we could all go back 12 years so I could hear that deep gravely voice make one more pithy comment, thankful with the rest of me that I even was part of this group of people.

I had been at USAO for a whole two days before I met John Morgan through the writing lab where I was hired as a tutor.  In time,  I ended up in classes with him and eventually Misti, Jack, Amy, Chris, Christy . .   I never took a class with Kirk, but by the time my junior year rolled around, I had been drawn into the group. I was an English major, not one of the chosen of the Davis Hall Little Theater, but they so graciously allowed me in their circle, even pulling me out of my comfort zone to tech that semester.  To get to help with Twilight of the Golds was being invited to hang out with the cool kids.

I am an incredibly shy and  somewhat introverted person - teching  was far beyond my comfort zone, but John talked me into it.  He didn't make a big deal of it, no cajoling or flattering.  He just said that they could use my help.  When I hesitated, he just said, "You should - you'd be good at it and it it would be good for you."  That was it and the conversation shifted, but his calm assurance was a good push.

I really needed to jump into the great unknown at the time - I had been there a year and had been soaking up all of this "think for your self" and "follow your bliss" dogma, but I was still not living my life yet.  I think that one step out of my known English department zone allowed the old facade to crack open enough to let me out and the world in.  I needed to spend time laughing and thinking and needed to quit being so uptight.  I needed to figure out what I really wanted.  It didn't happen over night - it is still happening - but doing something new was reinventing part of myself,  giving my self permission to be someone a little different than I thought I had to be.  I found out that I liked it.  I will fully admit that I still made some stupid choices, but I think that semester was the beginning of the me we know now, and I know it was influenced by the people I was with.

I have no fabulously funny stories of John, but I have this.  The few years I got to be around him, he spread his goofy humor around when it was needed and gave sound advice from the heart sometimes when I didn't want to hear it.  When he gave advice, it was short and never dramatic.  Just quiet.  But that voice stuck in one's head.  He was kind and irreverent and wickedly smart.  He told dirty stories and then made me question what I believed all in one conversation.  He was wise and kind and I can't imagine not liking him - I am simply thankful to have known him.  John Morgan, thank you for befriending me, thank you for making a too serious girl laugh.