Blessed

I've owed this blog for.....well, perhaps for my entire lifetime.

Over my 50 years, I've spent countless hours---whole years of them---feeling down, particularly feeling down about life and how it has treated me.  I often thought to myself how unfair it was that I didn't ever get what I wanted, which tended to focus on either being beautiful, being loved, or being Patsy Cline, and sometimes all of those at the same time!  (I never claimed my dreams were small.)  Most of the time, I would put on a good face and go with it.  Inside, however, I was resentful, angry, or just plain sad, seeing myself as one of those people who would just never have the good life that seemed to come so easy to others.

And then there are times when I realize I just need a good, swift kick in the ass, and I'm just the person to deliver it.

I have had SO MUCH to rejoice over in this life that I am ashamed I even had to admit to that paragraph of self-pity you just read.  No, I'm not beautiful or widely loved or anything like Patsy Cline, even though I can do a pretty fair job of singing her ballads.  No, I'm not a rich lady of leisure who's able to use her wealth to help the less fortunate.  No, I'm not above petty feelings like envy and anger and fear.  But I'll tell you what I am, and what I do have, and how I can feel.

I'm an average middle-aged, Heinz 57 American woman, part Cherokee, part French, part German, and a whole bunch of other things.  I'm a daughter, sister, aunt, niece, and cousin.  I've been working for pay since I was 13.  I'm a teacher, one of the lucky few who love what they do and were born to do it.  I was so fortunate to find that profession when I was young, so I'll be able to retire while I'm relatively young, which is how it should really be, if it's to be the best for the kids.  It's a young person's game.  I am a church member and a thinking Christian liberal.  I know and respect people of all kinds of religious persuasions, and I like to learn from them whenever possible.    I'm a reformed smoker and a non-gambler, but I'm not a goody-goody anymore.  I'm a relatively balanced person with some good, some bad, and some just-bad-enough-to-be-interesting. 

I have a family, a loud, busy family full of strange and wonderful characters, and we all, miraculously, have enjoyed relatively good health and happiness.  I have two parents with strong personalities: Mom is sweet but tough as nails, Dad is tough but full of boyish pranks.  I have a baby brother and a baby sister, both of them burning with intensity, though you might never know it.  I have seven---SEVEN!---magical nephews and nieces whom I've held, hugged, rocked, kissed, played with, read to, and teased mercilessly.  I have a separate family of my own "children," a handful of special former students that will always hold a most precious place in my heart.  I have the most amazing man in my life who loves me fearlessly and without question, as I do him; and it only took us 50 years to find each other.

I will probably always struggle with envy, fear, and anger.  But I feel the elation of experiencing the first warm breezes in the spring.  I feel the joy of holding a newborn's cheek next to my own and knowing that there is nothing else on earth like being next to that newly-made child of God.  I remember the happy tears that I, the stone-faced cynic, cried as my sister married her husband.  I remember, too, our laughter and encouragement we gave that baby sister the day she took her first steps so many years ago.  I know the anguish of loss from death---my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my childhood friend, my best friend---and from heartbreak.  But I have known laughter, oh, my:  the laughter of inside jokes and wisecracks and wild storytelling.  I know the bubbly silliness of a two-year-old, the one-too-many-glasses wine giggles, the bawdy joke guffaw.  I feel the energy of the whole world coursing through my veins when I can get a teenager to ask just one good question about something we've read. 

I have hurt for nothing in this life that I have needed, and I know it.  I don't always remember it, but I know it. 

What am I?  What do I have?  How do I feel? 

Blessed.  Blessings.  Blessed.