Manifesto

For the last three and a half years, and particularly since last fall, when I entered the Healthchoice trial program with Bailey Bariatrics, I had a lot of time to contemplate doing something I had always thought I would never do:  irreversibly change the workings of my body to control my weight.  I had come to terms with who I was, but my health was in a ridiculous state.  Even with exercise, better diet, and good A1C numbers, my neuropathy was worsening.  Something had to be done, and this was the best next step.  But I wondered:  Who will I be after this?  How would I avoid the traps that many fall into after a change that all doctors, literature, and meetings warned us was as dramatic as a marriage, a baby, a major move?  If I'm honest, I have to admit that it didn't worry me all that much.  At 49, one has a certain understanding of oneself that seems unshakable.

But then two things happened this week.  One:  a wise good friend reminded me not to get inside my head too much---that this process certainly could do it to you, and I think she knows I have a tendency to do that anyway.  And then Thursday, Mrittanie in first hour remarked, "You're so much nicer now, Ms. Welker.  I mean, you're happy all the time since you had surgery."  This amused me (three days back and I'm happy all the time!), but it also gave me pause.  What was in my head that might change my attitude about myself?  Did I have a good lock on who I am, so I don't get lost in some reverie of being someone new?  Because that is the very. last. thing. I. want.

I had a flashback to when I first started teaching Freshman Comp II, around 25 years ago.  One of the ways I tried to ease my reticent students into the poetry we studied was to have them write their own  poetic manifesto, the legend to the map of their lives.  That seems like the best way to handle the ideas passing through my mind the last few days.  You'll get no poetry here tonight, but I'm going to be playing a number of songs while I write to grease the wheels.  That's what you have to do when you don't drink or smoke yourself silly anymore.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Who am I---indeed, who have I always been, or been heading toward?

I am my father's daughter.  I know the wail of Hank Williams and the gravelly bass of Johnny Cash like I know the sound of my own name.  I love a few crime shows---rooted in my dad's love of shows we used to watch, like Mannix, The Rockford Files, The FBI---though mine run toward the more modern and somewhat gruesome.  Like him, I'll make a complete jackass of myself to make a kid laugh...but don't laugh if I'm mad.  Just don't.  I am tall, I love sweets, I have his fair skin and reddish hair, his long fingers and lack of patience, his craving for the road and a sentimental love of what family is to one another.  I am his great worry and his first pride---even though I didn't get his math gene. 

I am my mother's girl.  I am a reader who loves the smell of libraries, the older the better; she raised me on weekly library books.  I am not the cook she is, but I can bake.  I am common sense and practicality, no tears and violent protests to be found.  I am her family memory, the keeper of her grandmother's spirit and her mother's heart when she wants to revisit them.  I am her only pupil of sewing, which she is a master of and I will never be.  I am her oldest; while I cut my teeth, she bloomed from a girl to a mother.

I am a Welker---smart, funny, hardworking, proud.  I am a Brown---serious, shy, kind, quiet.

I am a sunrise woman and a sunset girl; otherwise, the daytime sky holds little interest for me, unless a storm is brewing.  I am at home in the night, in the quiet, a lone hoot owl calling from the trees.  I love the moon and look to it for answers, like the tea leaves in a cup.  I am sure that our spirits can connect with one another through space; it's happened too many times to me for me ever to forget it. 

I am a open-heart farm girl of the Plains, where a car on your dirt road in the summer evening will leave the air full of gold dust till the sun goes down.  I am moved nearly to tears by the ripple of ripe wheat; much worse, the cut stubble breaks my heart.   I'm filled with contentment watching cattle move across a hill of soft, full green grass.  Big round bales look like happy confetti dotting prairie hayfields and alfalfa pastures.  My family home is so beautiful to me that I want not to be buried when I die, but to have my ashes scattered in the pasture behind---so sure am I that heaven will open over it. 

I am Laura's best friend, and I always will be.  I am completely confident of being reunited with her on the other side of this world and this little life.  I am still the girl I was when we met:  young, immature, ready to fly.  If I am brave, strong, consistent, it's because she showed me I was; she was the first---perhaps the only---person outside of my family who loved and believed in me 100%.  I am able, just weeks short of 10 years since she left us, to call up her beloved voice, her laugh, her wisdom and clarity in so many situations.  I am part of her memory here on earth, the one I hope she would love most.  I am so sad that I don't get to see her again here, but I know I can wait.

I am mine alone; no other soul can lay claim to my spirit.  I am not without a heart, but I have truly loved only one man, one so unworthy that I thought I would die of it, wished, hoped,willed myself to die from it.  I am here for other reasons, some clear to me, some not so much.  I'm rarely lonely; being a lone wolf suits me.

Yet I'm still the Tahlequah girl with the wild red curls, the long cigarettes, the big mouth, the know-it-all college student who loved to dance and go out with friends.  I'm the '77 long-nosed Monte Carlo I drove for 9 years, high school through grad school, slipping through time like diving into creek water.  I'm the Patsy Cline wannabe who found my stage in a classroom and my music in a lit text.  I'm a thousand days and nights on a campus where I learned who I was apart from my home.   

I wade Oklahoma rivers, swim in mountain snowmelt, ride ocean waves.  I've walked the crowded streets of NYC, wandered the Alaskan wilderness, stumbled through the Malibu surf, and frolicked through Disneyworld.  I know the endless open sky of Canadian provinces my students have never even heard of.   I read maps like books and pore over pictures like casting runes.  I dream of a day when I could traverse Europe with no agenda other than my own education and pleasure.

I am a proud Okie, though my state doesn't always make me proud.  I'm rooted here beyond any moving, though it was tried once.  The Texas ground didn't suit.

Now as my years advance, I find myself learning new things.  I know now that, contrary to my belief for many years, I AM a vain person.  I was vain about my curly hair, my long legs, my good complexion, and my elegant hands.  One by one those have gone by the wayside, and I am learning to deal with growing old.  I'm not bitter, but I am whiny at times. 

I am ice cream and poetry, fast cars and grammar.  I'm a rock-n-roll song thumping away on the stereo, driving through the dark, the yellow passing lines click-click-clicking by.  I'm Miss Cheeseburger in Paradise, preferring the down-home to the more elegant.  I'm Tchaikovsky and B.B. King, Rhianna and Emmylou Harris.  I'm NPR and KVOO, KMOD and a Barry Manilow 8-track.  I'm a homemade dress and an apricot silk suit and a green turtleneck sweater.  I'm a believer that goodness, purity, and light will conquer evil and darkness.  I'm basketball games and wienie roasts, theater movies and late-night television.  I'm the one he won't ever forget.  I am blood and bone, but I'm music in every cell of my being, Emily Dickinson engraving my soul.  I somehow know what it would feel like to be able to fly, but I'm terrified of heights.  Great conversation is better than any meal to me; the way to my heart is through my brain.   I'm your sister/daughter/mother/friend, your teacher/counselor/neighbor/lost love.  I'm my own worst enemy and my greatest champion, determined to be more tomorrow than I am now.  I'm tired and worn down, but like water dripping for a thousand years, the process made me smoother, wearing down the jagged edges. 

And so I find....I am more than I can write if I had the entire web to do it.  You are too, dear reader.

This is who I am.  May I ever be true and faithful to it.