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Devil or Angel

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I usually tell people that I am an open book. I share everything or so it seems. I don’t know if my friends would tell you I am the same person in their lives that I am online. They might say they know me well. But do they? How much do we share with the people close to us? Is there a dark side to us we keep hidden from them? Is our online persona different if someone is a charismatic leader, trying to lead us to his or her persuasion, than they are in private? Do some people exude sweetness and niceness for their fans while those that know them personally could tell you that is not who they are?

I might come off as this confident person who has it all together. My friends know better. They know I am easily hurt, not confident in some of what I do, and crabby some of the time. Only a few friends know I have hidden much of who I am in my life because of the some of the conservative settings I grew up in, especially as a woman. I didn’t balk (much) when the men got fed first at the table. I seethed inside at some of the restrictions at church that I thought didn’t matter, such as no pink cakes at funerals or the perfect lining up of the silverware in the drawers because we were bullied by the kitchen committee many years ago. It seems petty but it was the small things that set me off at church and made me want to not darken the door. Ok, I can’t say I was always quiet about those small things or the big things either and I felt the judgment.

I was a frustrated housewife trying to keep up and decorate my house in a way that was acceptable in society the first thirty years of my married life, and when I began to be weird in my decorating sense that made me happy, I was ridiculed. So I hid the wildness inside of me for a long time because I had to be a responsible person so I garnered acceptance. That may sound strange. This was before the internet.

We become a chameleon changing our face to the public depending on what is acceptable. Should we do that? We are arguing big time about morals and politics right now. I don’t recognize some of my friends and they don’t recognize me. Before I wouldn’t have challenged their beliefs. I wouldn’t have known if they have hate in their heart for another race or religion. Maybe that is why they are surprised at my advocacy and I am surprised by their views. We kept hidden in many instances who we truly are out of what? Fear? Worry about losing a friend? Or worrying our views would be judged? Also to keep the peace. Were we fooling anyone? Did they know who we were but didn’t say anything because as long as we didn’t openly do it in front of them, it was that silent elephant in the room and our lives could continue.

I once knew someone who was the outstanding church worker. You never heard a word of bad language come out of their mouth when they were working in the church. They treated people well and with respect. The minute they left the church they were a different person with one the foulest mouths I knew. The also liked their drink. The language offended many people but it was never used in church. I never understood that. I am not judging, and I liked this person, but it was my puzzlement that made me want to ask why they used different language in church than in public. We all knew. It wasn’t a secret. It was well talked about. Did this person think God just lived in the church and didn’t hear them outside of the church? Or did they change who they were for that short time in church so they wouldn’t be ostracized. Should our church have been a place where this person didn’t need to change who they were when they walked through the door? And then begs the thought, if this person could hold the language when inside a church, why couldn’t they hold the bad language outside the church? Who did this person want us to see or want to be? Do we not accept all of our foibles and is that why we pretend to the world?

A long time friend brought up the subject of someone they had known for years, grown up with, spent their childhood with. My friend married someone of a different race in the early 70s. Her old childhood friend visited their home, sat a their table for years with both of them and their children. Then the internet arrived. Racism ruled it’s ugly head on social media posts and this longtime friend of my friend, started posting horrible, racist posts. I knew this person too and I was shocked as I had known them a long time too. My friend said to me, “They sat at my table with my family, shared meals. I had no idea they hated people of other races until now. What do I do with this? Who are they? I never knew when they sat at my table they were pretending.”

Who are we? Who and what do we let people see and why? It seems the advent of social media has given us all permission to be who we really are because we aren’t standing across from that person. If we were would we spew the same thing? I am just as guilty as anyone else of hiding behind the distance of social media posts.

I’m working on being more authentic. I don’t want to hurt people, but I’m finding that all that has been kept hidden from us by our friends, and all we have hidden, challenges that authenticity. I have heard the phrase, we have to agree to disagree. The problem I have with that is that if I agree to disagree I am compromising my values and who I am to the core of what I believe, and I now realize I have done that much of my adult life. When someone has made fun of someone, instead of standing up for them because I believe it was wrong, I laughed too, while inside I was cringing. I wanted to belong. When I saw someone that needed a friend but they weren’t acceptable because of how they behaved, I stayed away too so I wouldn’t become unacceptable in the crowd. When my kids wanted to hang with someone whose reputation was a little shady, I put my foot down and judged instead of accepting them into my family and finding out who they really were inside, and why their behavior deemed them unacceptable to the people in the community. All of that was wrong and though I wanted to, I did not speak up. I was too afraid of being left out in the cold by others.

I have stepped away these past few weeks from people that I have known forever, stepped away for a time is the action, for a time. I had to remove myself so I don’t bring out the inner devil that sits inside of me wanting to scream at our difference of opinion. I can’t agree to disagree but I can disengage myself from them because our views are so different. Step back and take a break. I suspect I am blocked too by many of my friends because of my views.

I don’t want to become that person again that laughs at a cruelty instead of speaking up. I can be cruel with my words, as I suspect most of us have that hidden devil inside. I am working on accepting my friends as they are, but if I feel that devil rising I know that I need to take a break, distance myself. I need a break from them and they need a break from me. That is a compromise I can do to keep peace even when I don’t feel peaceful. I don’t think there are any totally authentic people. But we can work on figuring out what we show to the world and is it true to who we are?

Disappearing Dining Rooms

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I read an article this morning that stated dining rooms were disappearing from American households. I wonder what that might say about family life today or get-togethers with friends.

I grew up in the 50s. A few of my friends’ homes had dining rooms, and others’ homes, including ours, had kitchen tables where we would dine with our family. At the time, dining rooms were reserved for special meals, or the occasion when guests visited for dinner. We sat down together, every night for the family meal by a table. It didn’t matter what was going on, especially if you were a kid, you were to be home for dinner, which in those days the night meal was called supper in the Midwest.

Usually, when meals were served in dining rooms, the dining experience was reserved for the special China and the good silverware. We had certain manners we had to use. I always loved the dining room experience as it made it a special meal.

I must admit I didn’t read the entire article. It could have been that people are transitioning to the big room experience and table. I suspect if I would have read it more in-depth than just a skim, the main focus would have been on family either having a leisurely dinner hour, or the fact many families do not sit down together for a meal anymore because they are too busy. Kids and parents grab their plates and sit separately at a counter, or in front of the television, or with a book or phone in their hands, ignoring the other people in the room. In my youth I tried to read books at the table. I never wanted to put down my book, but reading at meals wasn’t allowed. The same as hats at the table were not allowed. Fast food pickup today is popular with the working moms and dads and kids. The family can eat on the run separately while on the way to the many activities.

If I travel back through time and look at my pictures of the past, the photos over the years depict my family dining experience with family and friends. It was the heart at the meal. Every birthday is captured around the table. Every anniversary, birthday celebration, and the night meal are around a table. That was our time, coming together over a meal at night. Granted my kids would complain, they didn’t always like the food. Brussel Sprouts were not their favorite. One evening we had company and the adults sat at the table with the kids sitting at their own table because of space. We learned we should never let the kids out of our sight when there was a questionable vegetable. I found out later that one of my children put their creamed rutabagas in a napkin and snuck it into my friend’s purse so it only appeared that he ate them. Yes, at our table the kids had to try everything and eat what we served. There were no separate meals for the kids. We had a good laugh at that one. When my friend informed me weeks later of the mischief, I was upset. She laughed and said that was why she didn’t tell me sooner. My friend thought it was funny. She was a teacher who apparently had a sense of humor. The memory of the meal together stayed with us for many years. Now I have no one but the culprits to share the memory with and they aren’t talking. My friend has passed on, but he friendship and memory of that night by a forgiving friend is priceless.

As a family at the table, we shared our day, our fun things and our sad experiences. We laughed, we fought, we complained, but we were together. My kids learned manners and how to use the right utensils in case they were at a fine dining establishment. It was a time that I fear is long gone. There is something to be said about sitting around a table and talking for hours. And… teaching kids they do need to learn to sit and listen to adults and have patience. Yes, it can be done. Manners at a table, I believe reach out to the world in better learned behavior. Have you been in any restaurants with kids these days? Behavior hasn’t changed but the response of the parents has. Eating together also was an opportunity to assess if our kids were doing okay. Yes, sometimes we missed it. But family meals result in many funny stories to our grandchildren.

A few years ago, I was a guest at my son’s home. My grandson requested noodles for dinner. He then said to me, “Grandma, do you know what dad told me? He said if he didn’t eat what you made, he had to go to bed and he didn’t get any supper, and everyone had to eat the same thing. I told him you wouldn’t do that.” I laughed and informed him that it was indeed true. I don’t know if that was a teaching moment in my grandson’s life or a realization that perhaps his grandma wasn’t who he thought she was.

I’ll confess, I no longer have a dining room or a kitchen table in my apartment. It is too tiny a space. I had a table and chairs for the last year, but having guests was too cramped with the table. Have I given up on the sitting around the table experience? No. I am translating the table to tv trays, sitting them in a circle in front of my living room furniture so guests can sit and still have a table and group experience.

There is a reason the television show, Blue Bloods, dining scene is popular. They represent the families of the past, sharing bread and sharing their life, once a week. The Reagan family slows down and takes the time to learn about each other’s up and downs of the week, building a bridge one conversation at a time. Maybe we all want to experience that connection again.

We need those bridges of conversation at a dinner table more today than possibly in the history of our country. Families are fractured. Friendships survive on meeting in between our busy activities. We have a hard time turning off our phones and stepping away from the noise. We have sacrificed time with those that mean the most to us, for living in a world that offers us glamour, stress, and builds in us an idea that for our kids being busy keeps them out of trouble. We spend more time online with strangers than we do with those who share our lives in the flesh. How’s that working for us? Build that bridge. Break that bread at the table with family and friends. That’s the spice of life. We will all leave this earth one day. What will our life and the way we spend our time tell others about what we value?

Grief Doesn’t Have A Plot

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Many of you might not know I was a columnist for many years with a column called Something About Nothing in the Albert Lea Tribune. I came across this today as I was looking for columns to include in a book for the future. Though it is not a holiday it seemed appropriate for my life today. I also used it for my TikTok post. I hope it moves you and helps if you are grieving.

SOMETHING ABOUT NOTHING
by Julie Seedorf © November 2017

Grief doesn’t have a plot. It isn’t smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end. Ann Hood

Grief is strange. It pops up when you least expect it, blotting out the sunshine and carrying you back into a sea of sadness. It happened to me this week starting with an ache in my heart. I missed my mother. I wanted to walk out of my house and across town and visit her in her home and sit by the floor furnace and talk. I didn’t have any particular subject in mind. I was missing our mother-daughter time by that furnace grate. It has been fifteen or more years since we were able to spend time together. I am not one to remember death dates for anyone. I prefer to remember life dates such as birthdays. I can’t tell you what year she died.  Just when I think I am over her death, like a jack-in-the-box, the sharp twinge of grief pops up taking over my body. It is an ache in my heart which feels as if a part of it is missing.

Perhaps it is the time of the year, November when holiday cheer is rife but for many, sadness overtakes the joy and doesn’t let them savor the holidays.

We don’t only grieve for those we lost to death. We feel loss for many different reasons. For me, I feel the loss of a special family member who because of divorce is no longer a part of my life anymore. Love doesn’t stop because of a divorce. I feel loss for a special dog that is missing from my home because a former illness would no longer let me care for him. I feel loss for a way of life when jobs went away and nothing replaced them so we had to adjust to the simpler way of living. I felt loss when two of my best friends moved away and we could no longer get together at the spur of a moment. Loss came through a broken leg, a broken foot and an illness which laid me low, followed by depression and anxiety because of it. ‘

Loss can be felt deeply at holidays when families are split, or our childhood families are no longer living, or distance makes it hard for families to be together when togetherness is needed the most.

We all grieve for different reasons and our memories and emotions are unique to each of us. It doesn’t have to be a big event to make us feel those twinges of sadness. It can be an outside force such as losing a favorite restaurant that holds memories or a favorite pair of shoes which marked a special occasion. Feeling the emotions of grief is not relegated to certain rules or people or places.

Some people grieve in silence and others grieve loudly. Our feelings, that twinge in our hearts show up when we least expect it. It is what we choose to do with that ache that makes the difference.

Occasionally I will sit with it and feel all I need to feel. Other times I need to ask for help to find a solution so it doesn’t pull me under. Or I work on gratitude. There is so much to be thankful for in each and every part of the things that made my heart break.

I had a wonderful mother and accepting our relationship was occasionally oil and water doesn’t negate that thankfulness. She and my father taught me right from wrong. My family had a wonderful person in our lives and this person gave us beautiful grandchildren. I will be forever thankful for that person.  Sam, my pooch, gave me unconditional love when I was sick and he comforted me through it. Now he is happy with children who make him jump and play. We made it through job loss and we came out stronger. My friends are a phone call away. I am grateful they accepted me as I am. How lucky I was to have friendships like that in my lifetime. Through illness I learned to be thankful for every day and I found I had a strength I didn’t know I had.

The best advice when I was laid low six years ago was from my Pastor daughter. She pointed out I hadn’t taken time to grieve all the loss I felt in my life the former five years. I was the energizer bunny through it all. She told me to take the time to grieve, to rest and to get stronger. Feeling someone cared made all the difference in the world for me.

Holidays are coming and I am thankful I have the memories I do of family holidays and though families change we are still a family, only evolving.

You might ask why I am sharing these things with you. Grief is a sad subject. I can’t find anything funny to say about it. I decided to touch on this subject because in this chaotic world people are grieving about their lives and feeling guilty for having an ache in their hearts at what should be a joyous time. I want others to know they are not alone.

I don’t have answers. I know what works and doesn’t work for me. I know the grief I feel never goes away, but joy fills more places in my heart than sadness. I want to remember both because it is what made my life mine.

If the holidays are a sad time for you or if your emotions are more than you can handle please reach out to social services, your medical doctor, your church pastor or priest or a valued friend.  It is in sharing that caring hearts connect.