Although this guy was the basis in my renewed faith and determination to begin RCIA, ending the relationship with him has not in the least affected my relationship with Christ, or the Church.  I went to the first preliminary class this past week, and it was such a blessing.  My office mate Amy has agreed to be my Sponsor.  She was the first and only one I really considered for the task.  Asking her turned out to be such a blessing.  She had come into the office in a bad mood the day before and had mistaken some information I had put on her desk (I knew she’d want to see it first thing) for me tasking her.  She still felt guilty about her reaction to seeing the info; I had blown it off and forgotten it almost immediately.

The most amazing thing, though, since my last post is on a more personal level.  I certainly didn’t expect to start dating again right away, but the moment I met Bill, we clicked.  He travels all through central and south Texas during the week (oh, yes, I’m jealous–I’d give my eye teeth to have a job that allowed me to travel frequently), and likes to spend his weekends playing his saxophone wherever he can.  Yes, despite my obvious bias, he is that good!  We have so much in common, it’s almost freaky.  Our kids are very close in age (he has 4 to my 3), we both love just about all kinds of music (he just never let his playing  lapse, is all), we enjoy similar activities (allowing for differences in upbringing–his was a blue-collar life in New England; mine is strictly white-collar, Southern suburbia), and both long to travel–the difference is, he gets to.  That might change, though.  We’re talking about taking a trip together in the fall.  We shall see.  I’d love the chance to go, I just know better than to count my chickens before they hatch.  It’s a lot of time between now and the fall, and a lot could change.

Meanwhile, I am going to enjoy the daylights out of this relationship.   Never in my life have I felt freer, more appreciated, or more adored.  I, on the other hand, am giddily overwhelmed by the attention, which I freely admit to eating up.  I just hope he doesn’t think I’m saying I like these things just to impress him.  I’m not, I really do enjoy them!

Stay tuned, Sports Fans.  I’ll keep you updated–both of you.

Yesterday was the 1st anniversary of the finalization of my divorce.  Since then, “Independence Day” has taken on a whole new and wonderful meaning for me.  It apparently is becoming a personal tradition to celebrate in a big way by doing a big adventure.  Last year, I spent July 4 weekend in the Oklahoma City area, indulging with some shooty goodness with my good friends Michael and Jenni.  This year, I took off on the 2nd with my friend from work Leslie, her husband Robert, their friend Kim, my boys and two friends of my youngest to go tubing down the Guadalupe river in Gruene, (pronounced “Green”) Texas.  We were later joined by two of Robert’s coworkers, and off we went.

I learned quite a lot on this trip.

1.  Six hours floating on a tube, no matter how pleasant, is Too.  Damn.  Long.

2.  Plan ahead with the car keys.  The tubing rental keeps your keys as collateral.  One, it makes sure they get their tube back.  Two, it makes sure you don’t lose your keys in the river or get them wet (which, in the modern era of automobiling, makes them useless).  If I had realized it, I’d have given my valet key (which can get wet) to my son, and turned in my high-tech set to the attendant.  This would have lessened the impact of #3.

3.  Make sure EVERYONE is clear on the game plan.  We’d all agreed on the 6-hour float.  My youngest and his friends got off at the 3-hour point, which left them stranded at the car (the agreed-upon meeting place) for 4 hours (the 2nd half of the river was so slow that at a couple of times, I was actually going BACKWARDS!) without food, water, or a t-shirt to cover up.

4.  I don’t care if you never burn.  Use sunscreen.  If only I would listen to my own advice.

5.  If you don’t heed #4, vinegar does help to alleviate the pain.  Thanks, Butch and Dorie!  Just remember to keep the vinegar away from the rubber rash.  OUCH!

6.  When you think you have enough beer in your cooler, add more.  You don’t.

7.  If you are a female and tubing alone (I’d gotten separated from the rest of the group shortly after the 3-hour point), you will not suffer for company, especially if you have a floating cooler that looks like a giant fishing bobber.  I got a couple of nibbles along the way, and could’ve snagged a big, loud, drunk Aggie if I’d wanted to.  Yesterday was strictly catch-and-release, though.

I have to admit, though, that my brief encounter with that big, loud, drunk Aggie was what got me to thinking along the remainder of my tubing expedition.  In the conversation, he’d mentioned the last time he was on the Guad, exactly two years earlier.  It got me to thinking of how different my activity was exactly one year earlier, when I was on very dry land, bruising the daylights out of my arm with my .303 Lee Enfield.

It also got me to thinking about how far I’ve come in my life since the divorce.  I’ve bought a house for my parents and me to live in, right on the other side of the Interstate from my son’s school.  He walks there sometimes (via the underpass).  My daughter and granddaughter moved in briefly, then moved back with my son-in-law and seem very happy now.  I’m glad for them, and glad I was in a position to help when times got uncertain.

My eldest is with me now.  He is still adrift, and it pains me greatly to see him without direction.  In a perfect world, I would send him to stay with a good mutual friend a couple of states away whom I think could set him on a solid path.  My friend and his wife just had a baby, though, and I couldn’t make that imposition on them.  Not now.

Most of all, though, the encounter with the drunk Aggie got me to thinking about relationships.  As I said before, I could’ve snagged him if I’d really wanted to.  I’d have had to be stone deaf not to hear and blind not to see the come-on.  The thing was, I didn’t want to.  Y’see, I have a good man in my life now.  A wonderful, giving man.  One I haven’t seen much of the last couple of weeks because he is so giving.  It was beginning to allow room for the demons of self-doubt to creep in and do their undoing.   How many of my readers (both of them) have heard the whispers in your psyche before:  “You can’t keep him.  You’re not good enough.  It won’t last; why do you hang on?”

Then I got to thinking.  He IS a good man.  He is generous to a fault and sweet.  He tells me how much he appreciates what I do.  When I met him, he mentioned that the two major relationships in his life–his marriage and a long-term relationship–were both ended by the other party.  My response then was “I don’t understand how any woman (much less two) could leave you.  Four months later, I still don’t.  In fact, I understand that aspect even less.  I flat-out refuse to go down that path.  It’s not up to me to say what the future holds, but this much I know.  If it does end, it won’t be because of me.  For that, I will be grateful to the loud, drunk Aggie for making me realize what I want in my life…and whom.

I’m not posting this to seek acceptance or debate/debunk any tenet of any religion with anyone.  My announcement is probably going to shock people who thought they knew me well because this is something I, like Mary, kept and pondered in my heart.  This is my own personal journey, and I know in my heart of hearts it is the right and proper thing to do for me and my relationship with God.  I’m just here, as with every other (albeit too-rare) blog post, to tell my Tale.  I don’t tell y’all when I have issues with your own churches (if I do); please respect my decision.  If you can’t abide it, just ignore this post.

If you’re still here, either you’re interested to know what motivated me after more decades (and I don’t mean the rosary kind) than I care to admit, or you have a near-morbid case of boredom.  In any event, here’s my story.  As a child, I was raised in the United Methodist church.  I liked going to church–that is, I liked the services.  All the kids my age went to school with me and we couldn’t stand each other, so that was a minus.  But I digress.  As I grew up and became more spiritually aware, I realized that the shift the Methodist church had taken in the 70′s was so unBiblical that I could no longer abide going there.  Of particular affront to me was the appointing of women not only to the pastorate, but to be bishops as well–a direct rejection of Scripture.  Just before I entered the Air Force, I told my parents I wanted to join the Catholic Church–a decision they supported. (There is a branch of my family who is Catholic; I even have an uncle who recently retired as a Monsignor).

Before I could enter RCIA (Rite of Catholic Initiation for Adults–the “101″ class, as it were) though, I met the man I would eventually marry.  By the time he was a teenager, he had rejected the Catholic upbringing of his childhood, and he sternly forbade me to pursue my interest in Catholicism.  We never could agree on a church; it was one of many bones of contention throughout the 24 interminable years of that failed marriage.

Fast forward to March of this year.  I met and began dating the most amazing man.  Butch calls himself  a “sweet, innocent Catholic boy.”  Half is Gospel truth, half is with tongue firmly in cheek.  You decide which is which.  His faith gave me reason to reassess my own.  It wasn’t until last week, though, that I was prodded to finally quit dilly-dallying and act.

You see, Butch became ill.  As in, too sick to do anything.  He needed medical care, stat, and it was the one thing he wasn’t getting due to the morass of his health care system.  You see, it just wasn’t convenient for his doctor to see him, and the system wouldn’t let him seek other options.  Bastages.  So Butch got sicker.  I was doing everything I could for him, but the one thing that really gets to me is to see people I care about suffering.  At work one day, I went to lunch and received a text that told me just how much Butch was suffering.  I was in tears of frustration at his suffering, my inability to help, and the indifference of his doctor.  With no other action left, I began to pray.  Thinking of Butch’s faith, I prayed the Rosary, which I had learned all those years ago.  I got halfway through when my lunch break ended and I had to return to my desk.

When I got back, there was an email from Butch awaiting.  His doctor had found an opening for him that afternoon!  I took it as a sign that this is what God wanted me to do.  I mentioned it to the lady who occupies the other half of my office and who is also Catholic.  She was surprised to hear my story, she though I was Catholic all along!  Still, she informed me that her parish church (near where I work) announced that RCIA classes would be starting soon.  I’ve got her looking into class times there; I also spoke with the parish near my home.  Depending on several factors, I’ll be attending one of them.

This time, nothing (and no one) is getting in my way.  The Lord is merciful and infinite in patience.  For that, I am thankful.

I make no secret of the fact that I used to teach.  I also make no secret that a 6-figure salary wouldn’t get me back in a classroom.  Asinine demands of the academics in the ivory towers and hamstrings from having to teach test-taking instead of rational thought have driven out many of the best and brightest from the teaching profession.  I personally know scores of dedicated, brilliant teachers who want permanent jobs, but can’t get work because of petty politics.

But scumbags like Christina McCann get in and stay in long enough to damage not only individual lives but whole communities.  It is a failure of society as a whole and this entire “end justifies the means” mentality.

When I was very young, I watched my dad hard at work in the little house that used to stand outside gate 2 at Sanford Stadium.  It was Dad’s job during the 2nd half of University of Georgia football games to count the money collected at the ticket windows, secure it, and take it under police escort to the Athletic Department before the game ended and traffic choked for the next several hours.

Ticket sales at that time were a cash-only operation, and the large table in that tiny room was literally covered in tills that overflowed with greenbacks.  Dad quickly but methodically sorted the bills, counted them, and bound them in the appropriate sleeve, and put them in the cloth moneybags provided by the bank.

My little eyes, not even in the double-digits when it came to age, widened in fascination at the sight of more cash than I had ever before seen, and rarely seen since.  In my youthful ignorance, I asked my dad what seemed to me to be a reasonable question.  “Daddy, are you ever tempted by all this money?”

My father stopped counting, put down the stack of bills he was working on, looked me straight in the eye, and said lovingly but very firmly, “The day I’m tempted will be the day I quit.”

When Dad did quit a quarter of a century later, it was the lure of his grandchildren, not money, that pulled him away.

Too bad for the entire teaching profession that Christina McCann and her ilk never got that kind of schooling.

Then I met this incredible person.  I really wasn’t looking.  I was bored and web surfing one night when I found him.  We got to talking.  We chatted some more.  And more.  And even more.  We then decided to meet.  I chose the place.  I chose badly.  Once upon a time it had been casual dining, but it had just undergone a major overhaul and become trendy.  A little too foo-foo for a down-to-earth kind of guy.  Still, the chemistry transcended my unfortunate choice of dining establishments.

After years of being put down and trampled upon, this gentleman lifts me up.  Instead of making me feel like dung, he makes me feel like a queen.  He thinks he’s difficult to be close to–he has no idea what I had to put up with for the past half of my life.   Well, that’s not entirely true.  He’s seen me when ugly scenes in movies hit a little too close to home and bring up awful memories. He’s held me as he gently coaxed a cathartic purging of all the pain, doubt, and defeat I hid inside for so long.  That’s the beauty of this guy.  He is the one person in my life around whom I don’t have to be strong, tough, or “one of the guys.”  I adore him for that.

He’s generous beyond measure and sweet.  He can tell me when he needs his space without being petty and condescending.  The last person I lived with couldn’t tell me to pass the salt without being petty and condescending.  As for me, I’m learning how to be close to someone who isn’t needy.  It is a learning process.  He is understanding and encouraging, though, and in the process of teaching me how to enter the life of a self-styled “feral,” he is making me a better person.

My mom and dad have met him and don’t give me grief, so I take that as a good sign.  The kids haven’t met him yet, but that is more because of inability to coordinate hectic schedules than anything else.  It is interesting how the kids react, though.  Joe has already accepted him.  They’ve heard each other via the speakerphone in my car.  Joe was won the minute he found out about the motorcycle that bears a word that is a recurring theme in his favorite theatrical song–the one he’s always longed to perform.  He was also grateful for the assistance and support in starting Joe’s new passion:  a bass guitar.  Tina is quietly happy for me, but in truth I think she is much too busy with her own life to think too terribly much about mine.

Alex, though, is reserved because he hasn’t met this new man in my life.  He is Rottweiler-protective.  I can’t really say I blame him.  He and I have spent his entire life protecting each other.  When I had no one else’s shoulder to cry on about the bad times over the years, I cried on his.  He cried on mine in the days before he towered over me.  We have always been each other’s lifeline and old habits die hard.  He’s still gotta protect his momma.  I love him for that.  It is a gift money can only cheapen and tarnish.

Where will this go?  Who knows.  I dare not even label it for fear of going too far too fast.  I am content to take it one day at a time; sometimes, only one phone call or email at a time.  I do know, though, that hearing from him always makes me smile.  His touch sends me into the stratosphere.  And when I’m with him–whether on the phone, emailing/chatting back and forth, or actually in each other’s presence, there’s no place I’d rather be.  And it’s a wonderful feeling indeed.

The deliberate part of my silence was because I was going through a divorce.  Don’t tell me you’re sorry.  I’m not.  It’s the best thing I’ve done in a long time.  It’s not that I didn’t try to make my marriage work; I busted my ass and bent over backwards for 24 years trying to make it work.  I sacrificed everything, including a great deal of my soul.  I had my reasons for staying with the ex long after I knew the marriage had become a sham.  When I finally said “enough is enough,” I came to find out I had almost waited too long to end it.  While the divorce was pending, I decided it was best not to air anything in public.  “Anything you say can and will be used against you…, etc.”

Then when it was all over, I was just freakin’ busy.  Work had accelerated to a breakneck pace.  Mom had a cancer scare.  My son spent two weeks in the UK, having the time of his life and falling in love with the city of London.  Although I wasn’t really looking, I met someone wonderful, and am still trying to figure out where that will go.  My mom and dad moved in, my daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter got their own place, and my good friends Instinct and Intuition moved in for a little while they get settled in nice, sane Redlandia.

That’s the Reader’s Digest version of the last 8 months.  I’m off now to help unload I-squared’s truck and hopefully eke out a few hours with someone special.  I promise not to be gone so long again.

This one’s for you, Mark!  :D

Even more fascinating to me than the mention of my high school is the revelation that African immigrants said that they identify more with the mores of middle class America than the individuals who have been in this nation for generations, yet claim sub-Saharan Africa as their “homeland.”  Most striking of all was the admonition of Nigerian emigré Vera Ezimora, 24.  Ezimora, on the subject of slavery and racism in America gave the following sage advice:

“We have all been tortured.  Now that we are free, holding on to the sins of white men who have long died and gone to meet their maker is more torture than anything we have suffered.”

It seems to me that she is saying that to hold on to the outrage from the enslavement of one’s ancestors (who were all dead before most people living today were even born) merely perpetuates that enslavement by trapping a large segment of the population in a cycle of hate that gets passed from generation to generation because we don’t look beyond it to what can be if we keep our focus on the inside of a person rather than the outside.

I was fortunate enough to be exposed to all kinds of people from before I can remember.  The town I grew up in was the home of the major university in the state.  The property catty-cornered to ours belonged to a Filipino family (the head of which was also our family doctor) and that to our rear belonged to a black family who had held onto it for a hundred years before suburbia encroached (it had been a gift from the plantation owner who had held all that acreage where our little white-collar subdivision now stands).  One thing my dad is proudest of was the fact that his mother was so far ahead of her time when it came to equal opportunity.  In 1930′s Moultrie, GA, my grandmother, Mattie Lou Hall, ran the kitchens for the Moultrie schools.  She was the one person in town (according to my father) for whom the black denizens wanted to work most.  Their reasons were two-fold:  one, she offered jobs that allowed weekends off and two, she treated everyone equally.

I had the pleasure last night of meeting a middle-aged African-American woman who is the wife of a soon-to-be-retired Marine (as soon as he gets back from Iraq).  Like me, she is in a mixed-race marriage and we shared stories of our experiences in seeing the prejudices committed by our own “kind” toward those we love.  I related my tale of how, when Hubby was teaching Spanish in a tiny rural district that was fairly balanced among whites, blacks, and Hispanics, he had been accused in a 2- to 3-week period of discrimination against all three groups.  My response was to tell him “Congratulations:  you’re now an equal-opportunity racist!”

Her tale revolved around a young black Marine who had made allegations against her husband of bias against his race.  In truth the issue was that the younger Marine was unwilling to perform his duty.  Over her husband’s protests that the proceedings were closed to the public, my new acquaintance received special permission to attend the hearing.  When her husband’s name was called, she stood up with him.  When the judge told her that these were closed-door proceedings and she would have to leave, this brave lady respectfully but firmly stated from whom she had received permission to attend and that she was going to stand by her husband no matter what.  At the revelation that the Marine accused of racism had a spouse of the same race as the accuser, the allegations withered as fast as the confident faces of the accuser–and his counsel.

Semper Fi, sister.

I am averaging about 3 1/3 lbs. a week lost.  At the end of my 4th week, I was measured again–I’ve lost 10 inches, mostly in the shoulder/upper chest area.  I feel better than I have in a long time.  Also, I’ve finally figured out how to make the diet routine work around my schedule in a year-round classroom.  A typical weekday goes like this:

I’ve had some fun with my Lean and Greens.  I even used this fun to do my good deed for the day.  While I was there today, a gentleman was getting his initial orientation for the program.  I could hear the doubt in his voice increasing as he realized his favorite soul food dishes were going to have to be avoided for the time being.  I grabbed a post-it note from the desk and quickly scribbled down a one-serving okra gumbo recipe I’ve perfected that fits the lean and green guidelines perfectly.  When I presented it to him, the relief on his face said it all.

Being there for each other–that’s what it’s all about.