All About Wonderful Me
I wrote the following essay for one of my husband's cousins. She is compiling a list of similar entries, artwork, photos, etc. from the entire family for a journal of some sort to be presented to my husband's parents this Christmas. We were asked for a contribution that described ourselves. The instructions were very loose and without walls. It was an easy way to add to the ol' blog.
My adulthood to a certain point can pretty much be summed up in this passage from Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums:
Then suddenly everything was just like jazz: it happened in one
insane second or so: I looked up and saw Japhy running down the
mountain in huge twenty-foot leaps, running, leaping, landing with
a great drive of his booted heels, bouncing five feet or so, running,
then taking another long crazy yelling yodelaying sail down the sides
of the world and in that flash I realized it’s impossible to fall off
mountains you fool . . .
The “certain point” when this exuberant and justifiably selfish existence ended was 10:26 p.m., July 4, 2000, when Stevie and I reached an agreement—he was ready to see the world and I was ready to get him out into it. The tangible endorphin high that settled in over all of us exceeded any that I experienced after the few times that I actually did what the passage above describes. If my life then was a collection of experiences, of truly ecstatic highs and emotionally jarring lows, my life now is akin to what happens after those huge leaps down mountains: to sitting around a campfire with people you love and—more importantly—enjoy, with a lot of stories, a full belly, passing around a jug of cheap wine. Or, more accurately, a couple of juice boxes.
I miss hiking all the time. But that is the only flaw in my life now. It’s true that my life isn’t as exciting, but a happy marriage (hallelujah!) is a refuge from anything the world can dish out, and being a mother to a kid like Stevie is as comfortable as . . . I’m searching for a metaphor that isn’t as tired as an overused metaphor . . . so I’ll have to say as comfortable as taking off my bra at the end of a workday—or any day, for that matter.
The life I’m living is what happiness is. It is comfortable, satisfying, joyful, secure, interesting, and full of possibilities. It’s a life that I want my children to have, for starters.
That would be a good place to end, but I’m going to make a few more statements to better fulfill the time capsule aspect of this project.
Date: September 5, 2004
Name: Lisa McClary
Age: 34
Turn-offs: Presidential campaigns, war, civilian Hummer driving
Turn-ons: My husband, my kid, my future kids, living in the country, quilting, taking it easy, hiking, really good music, the smell of wild sage with red sand underfoot and blue sky above, sleeping under an open window with a cool breeze blowing
Two Lines of Advice to My Children: Don’t live your life in fear, and don’t get so busy that you can’t sit on a porch swing and watch the corn grow.
Keepin’ it all together: Lest you think after reading this that my life is some flower-strewn utopia, don’t delude yourself—I have problems, mostly of my own making. But for nearly two decades (!) I’ve gone back to my tattered copy of The Dharma Bums and here I found the perfect summary to my bio:
“But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged,
the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.”
My adulthood to a certain point can pretty much be summed up in this passage from Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums:
Then suddenly everything was just like jazz: it happened in one
insane second or so: I looked up and saw Japhy running down the
mountain in huge twenty-foot leaps, running, leaping, landing with
a great drive of his booted heels, bouncing five feet or so, running,
then taking another long crazy yelling yodelaying sail down the sides
of the world and in that flash I realized it’s impossible to fall off
mountains you fool . . .
The “certain point” when this exuberant and justifiably selfish existence ended was 10:26 p.m., July 4, 2000, when Stevie and I reached an agreement—he was ready to see the world and I was ready to get him out into it. The tangible endorphin high that settled in over all of us exceeded any that I experienced after the few times that I actually did what the passage above describes. If my life then was a collection of experiences, of truly ecstatic highs and emotionally jarring lows, my life now is akin to what happens after those huge leaps down mountains: to sitting around a campfire with people you love and—more importantly—enjoy, with a lot of stories, a full belly, passing around a jug of cheap wine. Or, more accurately, a couple of juice boxes.
I miss hiking all the time. But that is the only flaw in my life now. It’s true that my life isn’t as exciting, but a happy marriage (hallelujah!) is a refuge from anything the world can dish out, and being a mother to a kid like Stevie is as comfortable as . . . I’m searching for a metaphor that isn’t as tired as an overused metaphor . . . so I’ll have to say as comfortable as taking off my bra at the end of a workday—or any day, for that matter.
The life I’m living is what happiness is. It is comfortable, satisfying, joyful, secure, interesting, and full of possibilities. It’s a life that I want my children to have, for starters.
That would be a good place to end, but I’m going to make a few more statements to better fulfill the time capsule aspect of this project.
Date: September 5, 2004
Name: Lisa McClary
Age: 34
Turn-offs: Presidential campaigns, war, civilian Hummer driving
Turn-ons: My husband, my kid, my future kids, living in the country, quilting, taking it easy, hiking, really good music, the smell of wild sage with red sand underfoot and blue sky above, sleeping under an open window with a cool breeze blowing
Two Lines of Advice to My Children: Don’t live your life in fear, and don’t get so busy that you can’t sit on a porch swing and watch the corn grow.
Keepin’ it all together: Lest you think after reading this that my life is some flower-strewn utopia, don’t delude yourself—I have problems, mostly of my own making. But for nearly two decades (!) I’ve gone back to my tattered copy of The Dharma Bums and here I found the perfect summary to my bio:
“But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged,
the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.”
posted by lulu | 11:08 AM
1 Comments:
Thats a very nice description of you and all, but its been up here for days!!
Come on Lulu . . . we've had two political debates so far--one meaningful and last nights meaningless one. Surely you have an opinion? (Not that lacking an opinion has ever stopped me from opening my mouth or typing away.)
I understand that all things political leave an empty hole in the pit of your stomach and probably make us want to retch, but I would like to hear opinions!
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