Warning Signs

If you were a warning sign, what sign would you be?

I’d most definitely be spontaneously combustible. Spontaneous combustion occurs when substances with low ignition temperatures begin to release heat through oxidation, fermentation, or some other means.

(I definitely am at higher risk of combusting when fermentation is involved. Any sort of alcohol will do, for “wine is a mocker and strong drink a brawler,” as it says in Proverbs.)

When a low-ignition temperature substance begins to heat up and the heat can’t escape quickly enough, the temperature continues to rise, eventually reaching the ignition point. If enough oxygen is present, BOOM! Houston, we have liftoff!

Besides spontaneously combusting humans, other materials most likely to spontaneously combust include haystacks, grain dust inside metal silos, coal, boiled linseed oil, and pistachio nuts.

Clearly, giving me pistachio nuts for Christmas would not be a good idea.

I never was combustible when I was younger. My mother said she never saw me lose my temper during childhood or adolescence, and I can clearly remember the first time I felt overcome with passion at age 21 (get your minds out of the gutter, it wasn’t that kind of passion). My roommate and I got into it, and I became so angry that I threw my Bible across the room and flung a wheeled desk chair across the floor after it. She had been raised with a violently drunk father, and I can’t forget the look on her face. Nor can I forget the shock I felt at myself.

Since then, I’ve spontaneously combusted on numerous occasions. My particular brand of combustibility doesn’t always involve anger, but it does involve passion. I combust at the slightest moral provocation, a crusader at heart. This sort of combustibility makes me a good public speaker, an excellent advocate, an above-average writer when I’m feeling ardent, and a mother not to be trifled with. Astrologers have told me that my combustibility has something to do with how Mars, the war-like planet, is placed in my natal chart. One told me that shocking things won’t happen to me; I’ll initiate them or draw them to myself.

In other words, I’m no victim.

My combustibility, my passion about principles, irritates even me sometimes. I’m big on principles until I’m the one violating them, and then I like to look the other way and not notice myself acting so abominably. Like a baby who disappears under a blanket in a game of peek-a-boo, I think that because I can’t see, I cannot be seen.

I’d like to be perfect. Failing that, I’d like to be flawed in an artistic or mystical way, like Van Gogh with his missing ear, or like some saint whose stigmata require constant bandaging. Instead, I’m flawed in a bitchy way and cannot imagine myself being less bitchy as an old woman. At best, when I’m 80 I may be like Grandma in The Waltons, always shooing Grandpa away, never cracking a smile, always standing there with a wooden spoon in my hand and a scowl on my face. This is me, at my worst.

I’ve often asked God, “Why didst thou make me thus?” for I would not create a person as passionate as I unless she had some Great Calling, such as leading France to victory in the Hundred Years’ War, or refusing to stand up and move when told to go sit with the colored folks, or sewing the first American flag. I’ve had no such calling, so find myself pretty useless as a personality. Like one of my favorite bloggers who remonstrates with herself for her relational forgetfulness and lack of interpersonal connectivity, I find myself fatally flawed in the most inconvenient way.

Now that I’m all grown up and have suffered enough to have some perspective, I do see some merit in being myself, though. My personality is one of the best I can imagine for handling the sorts of things I’ve had to handle as a mother and a wife. I’ve done a good job in those roles, although I doubt I’ve endeared myself to anyone as I’ve done them. I’m no Olivia Walton, that’s for sure.

When I see myself at my worst and most inconvenient, I want to apologize to my loved ones for being me. If I were a nicer person, I probably would seem saintly. As it is, I’m a confusing mix of big-hearted and pig-headed, hearth-warmer and arsonist. I wonder what people will say about me at my memorial service? What, in all honesty, could be said?

She was passionate, she was pig-headed, she was a true Taurus, charging her way through life. She did everything she wanted to do but wasn’t proud of it. She was good, but she wasn’t very nice.

She was spontaneously combustible, dangerous around alcohol, haystacks, and pistachio nuts.

I think that would about cover it. 

 

 

Baaaad Behavior

My grandmother liked to use the word “uppity” to describe people in town who acted as though they were better than everyone else. Although she was one of the handful of people in her small southern town with reason to act uppity-she was educated, the mayor’s wife, a woman of no small accomplishments-my grandmother was not uppity. My grandmother was a forthright woman, gracious and intelligent, and not given to judgment. She rarely said an unkind word, so when she said someone was uppity, they were.

Uppity is an attitude of snobbishness and haughtiness that is carried by people who think better of themselves than they ought. They don’t know they’re uppity, though. They are unconscious to how they affect others with their uppityness because they don’t usually notice or think deeply about others. Their every thought seems to be about themselves, and about how everything affects them. I write “seems” because it’s apparent when a person is thoughtful and interested in others, and it’s just as apparent when a person is disinterested.

If uppity people think about others at all, it must be with the pathos of the uppity person pretending to be compassionate. Real compassion gets dirty and exposes itself to disease, dirt, and to other people’s untidy habits-kind of like Mother Theresa living with the lepers (gross). Uppity people don’t do real compassion. But they like to appear to be people who do real compassion, so they often reserve a truly compassionate, giving friend or acquaintance or two so that they can brag about their philanthropist friends and thus, by association, feel philanthropical themselves.

They are posers.

In the dictionary definition of “uppity,” it says that to be uppity is to be “rebelliously self-assertive; not inclined to be tractable or deferential.” A tractable person is one who is easily managed, who can be worked with and shaped, a malleable person who is willing to yield. A tractable person is a humble person, and it follows that the proud person is not.

Proud people think they’re right; people who are right don’t need others to agree with them.

These are fine points that are often missed in the heat of the moment.

Uppity people cannot seem to merely cherish their superiority in their own minds without having to share it with others through their behavior. Uppity people act uppity. They leave no doubt in your mind as to just how superior they are.

The uppity people in my life don’t consider themselves uppity. To the contrary, they pride themselves on their humility and their willingness to appear malleable and tractable.

Yes, they pride themselves on their humility.

I was reminded of this sort of uppitiness during Mass Saturday evening, when the deacon read the gospel reading for the day from Matthew 7:21-23,

Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’ 

How harsh Jesus seems in this passage. How could he tell people who prophesied in His name, cast out demons in His name, and performed many miracles in His name that they don’t belong? Surely their every deed proved that they were part of His clan.

But earlier in that passage, beginning in verse 15, Jesus warned the disciples about false prophets “who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” I’ve commented before about vampires, the undead who feed off of live people because they do not have authentic lives of their own. Jesus said that people can look like sheep, even act like sheep, but have the inward disposition of being ravenous wolves. He told his followers to be aware of this sort of person; He said to look at their fruits, their deeds; and then be careful about that sort of person.

Don’t let that wooly clothing fool you, he said: Their deeds will say everything.

Just When You Need It

Children are pretty wonderful, aren’t they? Mine seem to have some magical means of producing creative gifts pregnant with meaning just when I need them most.

My daughter Juniper had to write an acrostic last week in school and chose to use “MOM.” I loved the three phrases she used. I loved it that, in her nine-year-old heart, I’m still “magnificent.”

Magnificent! Magnificent mother!

Oh, it makes me smile.

And then… “open-minded” (she even remembered the hyphen, smart girl). She might have written ornery, odd, offensive, old, or opinionated, any of which may be apt descriptions of me from time to time. But she used “open-minded,” one of my most cherished qualities.

Being open-minded, open-hearted, and open-handed are all virtues I try to practice and teach my children. And my child noticed.

I feel so happy about this.

“Marvelous rose.” Ah, this has to be my favorite part. My daughter Ivy said that when Juniper chose “marvelous rose” to describe me, Ivy asked, “A rose? Why not a lily or some other flower?”

After a thoughtful pause, Juniper answered, “No, Mom’s a rose, a marvelous rose.”

I smiled when I heard it, and I told Juniper that I could see it: In her eyes I’m beautiful, strong, my fragrance is heady, and I have thorns. Yes, one wants to be careful when plucking a rose. When gardening, I wear gloves as I tend my roses.

A rose is beautiful, one of the most beautiful and fragrant of all flowers. A perfect rose is truly something to marvel at. The rose was a symbol of Venus and Aprhodite; early Christians used the red rose as symbolic of the five wounds of Christ. Roses symbolized protection and the keeping of secrets and vows, so also came to stand for loyalty. 

Roses are well-placed under the windows of a home, for they are protective as well as beautiful.

I could see how my child saw me as a “marvelous rose,” because at my best I embody all that children want and need in a mother–grace, beauty, fragrance, strength–and I, too, have thorns. Be careful when handling me! I may draw blood if you’re not careful! I am protective of my treasure, protective of my children.

Juniper wrote her acrostic last week when my mothering was under fire due to something I published here. The vehement attacks of a few people who said I was a horrible, “crap” mother bothered me. Because I’m an open-minded person, I must also be open-minded about criticism. Was it possible that I was, in fact, so powerful that I had not only brainwashed my adopted children, but my brainwashing also extended well into their adult lives and compelled them to make my choices rather than their own? Was it possible that I was so deluded about myself and my character that, rather than showing an imago, a true likeness of my self, I had produced only a false idol through self-deception?

No, it wasn’t possible, given the work I’ve done, given who I am and what I’ve been doing with my love all these years. But, still, it seemed prudent to look at some of these issues again, to talk with my children and ask them for their thoughts on the matter.

When all was pondered and discussed, I saw that I had, indeed, conveyed an accurate image–a copy, a likeness–of my true mothering self to my children.

My youngest child has an image of me that she carries, and in her image, I am a marvelous rose. Somehow, over her nine years of having me as her mother, she has smelled the heady fragrance of my love; our love has bloomed and unfolded as we have both bloomed as people. She, my most dramatic child, sees me seeing her, and the two of us together are like marvelous, amazing, surprising, excellent roses.

Over many years of mothering I’ve received many delightful poems, drawings, paintings, cards, weavings, moldings, and other expressions of love from my children. But I can’t recall when the timing of one was so perfect, or when I was so touched by the opportunity to see myself through my child’s eyes.