Last night a friend asked me about Jack and Jill, an organization I know little about (any one who does feel free to share) I was hardly the debutante type. In my hometown I was the kind of girl they called “fast”, I was actually more like light speed. Debutante parents didn’t want their daughters hanging around with me and well their sons…they silently prayed I imagine every night to the planned parenthood gods that their good boys “just said no”. Most of them had the wrong end of the stick, their good boys were interested in other good boys and their daughters taught me a thing or two. But the label was fun and I did hang around an older crowd, that was so over protective I never got have any real fun (well maybe a little) and I missed out on a lot of things girls my age did then. My friends were in college, so I didn’t have time for things like prom, or homecoming or dances.

Senior year, I didn’t go to a ball but I went to my first Superbowl party. I was 17 and it was at the apartment of this fraternity guy that all my friends knew well. He was the most popular guy around, he was gorgeous and funny and every girl threw herself at him. Except me. I didn’t even bother. He was the best host and he was cooking for his guests. I knew nothing about football. I sat blankly like the the other girls in the room and watched the commercials. I didn’t even bother to understand the game. When we left all the girls in the car giggled about the host, how cute and funny he was. They all claimed his as their “brother”. Oh brother….A few months later was prom night and instead of making memories that will last a lifetime with my classmates, I was throwing the hottest party in town with my friend whose parents were out of town. By that time we were all friends, and when frat hottie and all his friends showed up, including one I was sort of seeing. Well it’s a party that lives in history. Maybe I missed the prom…but it was one of the best nights of my life till this day. I went away for the summer, everyone slowly disbanded, college, jobs, grad school. Over the years. I would see a few occasionally on campus but this fast girl was always fast in her books. Four years of college took me three. I jetted out of the country right after graduation and never looked back. If you asked me for my best and happiest memories of yesterday, those are the only two I have. That “prom night” and that Superbowl.

I went on and built a life, of which football became a huge part. My former said you loose me for 16weeks so I decided to join him. Yes I changed for a man. I let him train me in it, and he knew everything about the game. Every Sunday for 16 weeks we watched and I played, I studied, he marveled at his smash mouth football frankendoll. I played fantasy and got a trophy, I sat in the cold at Giant’s stadium. I remember what I was wearing when the Giants won the Superbowl a few years ago. I complain that finding safeties who can cover is tough these days and that the Ravens QB is a sleeper pick. I came a long way baby…from that girl on her first Superbowl.

Some of you know what this years Superbowl was like for me, following a gut-wrentching break from my former, I spent it on another continent. The game came on at breakfast and I was making amazing spanish omelette’s ( I had never cooked before, my former did all that too), with fresh guacamole…for frat hottie who is now a majorly amazing man.

I had decided to give up football this year. It’s painful to hear my former who I will love in many ways for the rest of my life coming out of my mouth. I sound like him, I tell jokes that I know he would laugh about. He’d be proud of me in the game. I said I needed to break that bond this year and trade in my jersey for opera seats and a debutante dress. Football frankendoll must die!

This morning a friend who is far away sent me a note asking me a huge favor… could I help out with his fantasy football team? I laughed…when God is happy with you he plays with you says an old African tale. I went really fast to end up right where back I started. I said yes of course, and I thought life is good. Progress for me isn’t about how much I can get rid of, and fast… but how much of what matters can I hold on to. My grandmother used to say…don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. I almost went to fast and cut off something precious, to spite my face. Thank God… for the sense of humor. And for letting me keep my nose. I need it to breathe deep and smell the progress.

Sometimes in life we get the boot. Fired from a job, a marriage, a friendship…a group or organization. From some groups, like the military, boot camp is a weeding out process. It’s done, not so much to look at who has failed, but to identify those who have what it takes to stick, to be the best and who despite moments of discomfort and tension never quit and never give up. There’s a thought that says if you quit once, you will quit again, so those who drop out and say they want out…well, there are no second chances.

Someone used to call me relentless…say I never stopped. When I dig into something I don’t walk away, which is why I am careful about what I take on. A job, a relationship, a friendship, a process…for me it’s a never say die kind of journey. Yesterday, my best friend was in a jam and well… I’m what you would call a first responder and I don’t quit, she counted on that. I have noticed that lately, more and more of my friends come to me and what used to seem like a burden, now is a pleasure and a manifestation of their faith in me. It’s about trust and leadership and knowing that I won’t get tired, I won’t quit on them. Ever. It has also meant a weeding out process, that I am glad is taking place naturally and not by my force or will. A good guy friend dropped the other day, I thought I would be sad, I was relieved. Left space for another, who is, as they say…yolked like me.

My first marriage was boot camp, a training ground. Yesterday, when someone I loved was in a serious situation, I was able to stay calm and help her lead herself through. My basic training with him, didn’t always make for the healthiest “marriage”, but sometimes we need to change or rather transform how we look at something that is no longer in our life. He taught me survival skills, literally, and football. Then he gave me the boot. I have been pretty mad about that. Until now. No Eat, Pray whatever for me.

Yesterday in addition to my best friend being in crisis, my beloved who is in Afghanistan, sent me a note that said “Help!”, want to know fear, get an email like that. I opened it, he was just worried about his fantasy football team. Again I thanked my former, I knew what to do. Instinct and training. Sometimes places in our lives are no more than training grounds, a camp to prepare for the next journey. I am seeing my next journey unfold before me and I’m thankful, as are two people I love that my boots weren’t made for walking, especially not over people. My boots stay firmly on the ground!

Everyone says they have had it, with the war “thing”…what I love ( is there a sarcasm font) about this country is the sheer decadence with which we can choose to turn a blind eye to the world. I have never thought of myself as having an us or them mentality but I am finding myself developing one. By us I mean those that live in a world bigger than personal situations, who don’t look at others and say you will never understand because you’re not me or you don’t know my brand of blues and by them I mean those who live in small, microscopic sized worlds and think the world is a dumping ground for their bad day. I was the latter this week so I am taking myself to task here…when the American petri dish fits!

Friday couldn’t have been a better day, I went to a film on my favorite artist and I was excited about being invited to a graduate seminar this fall and agreeing to go. I also made plans for the holidays which involve a study abroad and life as very busy. Busy is good when you got this war “thing” all up in your life. My phone rang and I missed the call, it turned out to be my sweetie calling from Afghanistan. The place where the war “thing” is happening, I think many people have heard of it at least. Basketball Wives isn’t filmed there. Well missing a call is about one of the most painful thing that can happen, aside from an extended deployment ( wait that was last month) and the sadness in his voice crushed me. I stormed into AT&T wanting to make sure nothing like this happens again and had this kid talk to me like I was stupid, tell me I have the worst phone for dropped calls, “everyone knows the Iphone sucks” he says in that what are dumb voice, and that there were worst things that could happen to me…like my partner could be dead than missing a call… but he’ll do me a favor and change my SIM card. Well I was shaking. I thought he should’ve been considerate, kind even…helpful and not condescending to the brink of rudeness. I thought he should’ve cared. I was living in my own small little world, where the customer gets respect, helping a war bride is honorable and selling products you are proud of and have faith in is the standard. Clearly I don’t get out much.

Who cares about my small world, where the person I love is trying to fix a mess made in the lives of people who have lived under tyranny for years and years, of the women who are mutilated and murdered? Oh and the thanks he gets is someone trying to kill him and some AT&T kid with fake diamond studs in his ear with hopes of being discovered by Vanilla Ice T being rude to his woman. My world is so small I think people care about 1500 year old monument that get destroyed on the other side of the world, or my dumb little problems of trying to get supplies to a girls school in a small village where there is no electricity or running water. I needed to wake up and decide which side I’m on. You thought you bought a phone that works…..haaaa. It does everything except its core function. duh!

It’s us vs. them out there alright and there are more of him than me so I’d better get clued in real quick. All this indulgent thinking of mine, that the world is about the war, or the economy or helping fellow man or customer service only serves to annoy those that are really in charge and who know there are more important issues like the MTV VMA’s on VH-1…and seeing who “tweeted”. The sooner I come into this world and out of my own small one I am assured things will work out just fine!

We used to sing this song in Girl Scouts about friendship…the tune went something like, make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold. The tune still plays over and over and over in my head like some kind of religious camp brainwashing. They’d put us around a fire, at night, and stuff us with marshmellows and chocolate then make us sing these songs and make “friendship” bracelets. The boys camp on the other hand were learning useful things like wilderness survival and how to start a fire out of two little twigs. I wish I had learned to do that, then I could set all the “friendship” bracelets ablaze and roast a low fat meal over the fire.

In the past year I have had “old” friends come back into my life. Some have been a welcome blessing and others have been…well a painful lesson in what can happen if a stupid Girl Scout song has stayed wedged in your brain for over 20 years. One is in love with the guy I love and has done everything in her power to systematically drive a wedge between us since he and I started seeing each other and the other is like her flying monkey dispatch. All the while smiling and laughing in my face and for months I just excused it, thinking that the history of knowing each other made the relationships “gold”…I’m now terming it the loyalty fallacy. I’m “friends” with you because I have known you a long time. You knew me “when”. That’s even worse…usually “when” constitutes a time in your life that you’re not proud of and represents a person you aren’t anymore. Staying tied to someone for that reason is like ensuring you never really grow beyond, “when”.

I grew up in a small town, where everyone still knows everyone and they are all friends, but when I return I find I have to become someone I’m not to meet them at their level. Not putting them down, just were not the same kind of people and conversations are odd at best. Not to mention the undermining that takes place to bring me down to size. It’s collaborative and apparent. So two weeks ago I told one…listen lets not say were friends ok? We’re not. I have no ill will but having lunch with you holds no appeal for me, you know and I know the real deal so good luck, have a great summer and since we both love the same guy lets just say our common place of agreement is in his well being. If he decides he wants to be with you, I wish you both the best always.

That was the truth, honest, pure and simple and I thought it would be respected for it’s honesty and directness. WRONG! It’s like the salem witch trials. I’m worried for Christmas to come, it’s like high school all over again. I’m worried my rental car will be egged. I guess I broke the Girl Scout Mafia rules, once you wear the friendship bracelet you wear it for life!

We teach girls they have to get along and help each other and not be competitive and support each other like “sisters”. Well I’m an only child and if I don’t want to be your friend I don’t have to be, and I want my daughter to feel the same way. There is more to life than being liked and because I have known you a long time isn’t a good reason to be friends, or at least not one I want people to be friends with me for.

I look at my friends…my real friends… and they are dynamic, supportive, amazing women who I can talk to, turn to and trust. We laugh, we cry and in my darkest moments they were there for me. I know they are rooted in my well being. They support my relationships and hold the man I care for in high esteem and encourage our growth. If someone supports you more during a breakup than coming together…red flag. I was wondering why I was holding onto these relics from the past instead of letting them go…letting them go and be friends with people who really like them and spend time with people who really respect them. I realized I didn’t want to be the “bad” girl again. The bad girl who has her own mind and can say I don’t want to be friends and have that be ok. It’s not catty or any other term that invokes a picture of mud wrestling to say I’m sure your’e a perfectly nice girl but “I’m just not that into you”. So take a look, a real look at your friends and how many would you truly call a friend vs. someone you’ve known for a really long time. What are the standards to be your friend because I just raised mine! Platinum or bust!

Some people should come with advisory warning stickers. The moment the phrase begins…”I think you should…” immediately a huge tape should fly across their mouth. Are there people who are constantly giving you advice or telling you how to live your life, manage your career or handle your marriage? Do you listen to them, take their advice or let it go in one ear and out the other? Does father, mother or girlfriend(s) know best or are you the sole expert in your life?

Sometimes heeding the advice of others is a good thing. When a dear friend advised me to steer clear of a certain Mexican restaurant due to a “reaction” she had I listened. It could have been just her but it didn’t mean that much to take the risk. Telling me to leave my spouse…well that’s another story. When it comes to large matters like relationships, job changes, parenting…what makes someone “qualified” to even tell you about your life?!

Whenever I find myself offering advice, like now, I have to catch myself to make certain that I am not just acting out my own best case scenario. Using someone else’s situation as a dress rehearsal as I project myself into their drama. Often people tell you what they would do if they were in your shoes, but how would they know if they have never been in YOUR shoes?

Have you ever been in the middle of an argument and suddenly realized that you’re wrong? What do you do? Do you back down and immediately confess your error or do you argue the wrong point to the death? What if the mistake was weeks, months or even years ago and you realize now that you were wrong, do you reach out and tell the person that they were right all along or do you let…sleeping dogs LIE? Do you tell a friend? Do you get it off your chest or is what’s done… done?

Let’s say the mistake was huge and its implications destroyed lives, yet there was nothing you could do to change the past, would you put up or shut up? These I would say are questions of character and nature and how you respond some would argue determine who you are in the world. However, as the saying goes…hindsight is 20/20. There may be things you look back on and see your error in judgement that would’ve been near impossible for you to see in the moment. For example I looked back and saw how many of my ways contributed to the loss of something and someone most important to me but do I call that person and say so now? They have moved on with their lives, perhaps forgotten about it and it could be my own ego that needs to be satisfied, more harm than good I’d say. However, is not owning my mistake and making amends (to the extent possible) a reflection of poor character?

In Catholic school we could go to confession everyday and say a few hail Mary’s and volia! absolution…well it wasn’t that simple but you get the point. Who do we confess our transgressions to now, other than morning and afternoon talk shows?

I’ve discovered a whole lot of flaws lately and that has tarnished the shine of self-righteous indignation just a smidge. I’ve yet to confess…do I need to in order to be forgiven? Do any of us?

Do people really believe in the saying when a door closes a window opens? If they did would they worry so much about the door with creaky and shabby fixtures, fighting tooth and nail to keep it cracked just a little longer, even though not a whiff of fresh air or sunlight can get in? If they had…ehem…Faith that a window was going to open as soon as they shut the door…wouldn’t they just shut the darn thing already?
Or is it that not in anyones control?

Doors open and close based on alignment, spirit, lessons learned and timing. You can’t close a door to soon or to late because it’s not up to you. It’s all a plan, perhaps? But when one or six close, leave them shut!

I have had so many doors close in my “face” (life) over the past few years I feel like I’m selling girl scout cookies at a Jenny Craig meeting. However, a few windows have opened. The first blew in courage, the second blew in resiliency and the third blew in the most unexpected wind I could’ve imagined, love and friendship from someone who is the living embodiment of my first two! I love the mighty wind…

A huge window is open and I get worried I might fall out from time to time…or that a bitter wind from the past might slip under a crack in the door and push me out. Lucky for me in reconstruction, the window came reinforced, with bars and a fierce guard dog ( ok maybe not so fierce) but nothing is getting in. Unless…I peak behind a closed door. You know, just to see!

Sometimes I get curious as to what I left behind, nostalgic and at this point as the memories dissolve slowly I feel like I don’t want to forget. However, sometimes forget we must. The real door we are closing isn’t on other people it’s on ourselves. The people we were before. I am no longer the person I was…those people are gone. Opening a door, when the window is open can cause something called “Backdraft” and that’s a powerful and dangerous wind that will have your happiness…blowing chunks out of both ends.

If you find yourself tempted to open a closed door…think of yourself in the movies and you are watching a blondish haired woman go down a dark hall to a padlocked room, just to “see”. You’re screaming at the screen for her to stop, but off she trots. What happens to her?

As someone I used to know once says ” No Good” but better still is the advice of someone I could never forget no matter how big or reinforced the door…”Keep it Movin”

I found out the man who fathered me ( not my dad, another conversation) is dead this week. Happy Fathers Day! To say I had a complicated relationship with my biological father is an understatement. His pain drove him to do some things to me from an early age that ranged from the inappropriate to the downright criminal. When I got notice from a cousin a few days ago telling me he was dead, I was surprised at the sudden empathy I had for him. My whole life I was certain I would feel ambivalence or even joy at his passing, but I didn’t. I felt sorry for him and possibly something close to forgiveness, for him, his actions and for the things I did to survive them.

Now let’s not get carried away, I cut him out of my life totally several years ago after he came into my home and exposed the past in such a way that it caused my then fiance, along with a team of doctors to place me in a facility for a little “rest”. There will be no “Imitation of Life” moments over this way. In fact, I have said I really have no need to know the details about any of it. Let him be put to rest by people who had something warm and decent to say about him. By those who cared enough to even look into why his mail was being returned, or who knew him when he was a boy, before whatever killed him took over. I think he deserves that, at least that part of him that was once a child, a son, a human who did good things. I know he did good things, I saw some. I see them in me sometimes and once I grasped I wasn’t fated to turn out a monster too, I could look at them and appreciate them.

The irony, or maybe not so ironic, is that I am in love with a man similar to the good parts of my father. A man who committed to a life of military service, a man who has a daughter that he is proud of, a man who loves his two sisters, a man who pledged the same fraternity even. I am letting my observation of those good parts take me to another side. Unfortunately, that river crossing met with a Sea Serpent this week, known as my mother. Life has become something like Homer’s The Odyssey.

My mother, or the SS as I call her, hated my father. Her wish was to “spit on his grave” and she spent the better part of my life injecting me with her bitterness and infecting me with her rage. Now my father did plenty to have me develop my own feelings about him that could’ve kept me working in therapy for years, but my mom wasn’t going to go quietly into that good night. Oh No! She had been wronged in her eyes, he promised her a life, he owed her a CHECK. If I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times about “child support”. That word is so funny to me…”Child Support”. My mother has never given the kind of emotional, spiritual, psychological or self-esteem building support a child needs, but girlfriend knew how to demand some financial support. If she could’ve put stripper pockets in my diapers she would’ve. And we weren’t poor, I went to the top private schools in the country without his money. I didn’t want for anything, except to get away from her. It was never enough.

When I told her he was dead, she chuckled and kept saying wow, wow, wow…while I saw her doing the math in her head. She’s now is the monster I never want to be. She’s now is the one who is cut off. She’s now the one who may end up just as the one she hated the most. I began to think about all those mothers who knowingly or unknowingly turn their children against their fathers. All the men who have been reduced to a paper dollar by people who have no real knowledge of intrinsic value. Women who have to make “him pay”, neatly wrapping their own sense of entitlement in motherly concern. I see women daily from countries where child support is a foreign concept, yet here and in some communities more than others, it’s a career aspiration.

My father squandered his opportunities with me and with life and he took that to his grave. His death provides only the relief and freedom that comes with no longer waiting for an answer as to why? May he and I both rest in peace. My mother must now use her “I was there when he wasn’t” currency for the only thing it’s good for. An opportunity to not end up like my father.

Me I am going to bury the idea of birth father, and maybe mother, that was given to me out of experience and appreciate the roles as they can be created out of my imagination, out of my own values and from my own body. I’m going to let the dead bury the dead while I finally embrace my right life.

Democrat or Republican? Ever since JFK adopted Civil Rights as a key component of his administration’s domestic policy the African American vote in this country has been nearly 80% Democratic. Has the party remained true to the values that best serve African Americans? I would ask have they ever?

Do African American’s believe that they have been truly served as a community and as a people by them Dem’s? I would venture to guess there would be a lot less complaining if so?! Or like most reluctant to change do most just follow, like sheep, what has been for most of their lives to the exclusion of another party or solution?

I’m not left or right and I certainly wouldn’t tell another which to choose, but I must ask if all of us wouldn’t be better served by being party neutral? More issue driven, and solution oriented no matter what direction it comes from.

Who do you party with and why? How often do you evaluate your invitation?

Happy 104th Birthday War on Terror…Today officially marks the day that launches the war in Afghanistan into being America’s longest war, surpassing Vietnam. As the contemporary version of a war bride it’s my business to know these little facts. You’d think that I hate War but I don’t. Counting the days until it is ends…there are days like that. Then there are days like this. When the talk of War gives me Peace. Yes Peace. Even though the man I love is over in that desert, fighting and as of yesterday doing his first bit of kevetching about missing out on our World Cup plans, I can’t hate War. War brought us together, in every sense of the word. War has given me pain and given me peace. Can I take one without the other?

Vietnam was a horrible bloody battle, that we look upon as a stain in our history, a pointless fight that no one won and whose losses cannot ever be measured. However there were gains and I happen to be in love with one of them. He was born in Vietnam, so even surrounded by death and destruction life even at its worst finds a way to birth joy.

While he was off training to take his place in the military to lead war, I was off finding myself in a less structured way of life, until I found myself in the middle of my own War. In my home there was violence, destruction and endless fighting. More pain I thought imaginable. Only not with the nameless and faceless, but among those I love. I lost everything in my War, almost my life and as true to the law of attraction, my War baby appeared, once again bringing his life into my world, giving me peace, as I imagine he did for his mother whose country was torn to shreds by killing and fighting.

We hate death, we hate fighting and destruction but it’s always darkest, or so I hear, before the dawn. War is more than just death…it clears the path for new life, it spreads and fuses culture and it rips down systems of oppression and tyranny. We get so caught up in the if we should be, what we miss is the what is. I don’t think I want to live in a world where there is no War, because I fear to do so would mean living in one where thee is no Peace.