I can’t think of a single thing that really sticks out in the 2010. No death, no destruction, no major financial crisis, no major hospitalizations. Thank god. We should all have a year off. I guess last year was mine. Makes me wonder what is going to show it’s face on the horizon of 2011.

The internet is a wonderful thing. This week alone we’ve looked up naked mole rats, Harry Potter costuming, replaced a broken toy, and a handful of other things. We also got a new-to-us kids-sized game table from our local FreeCycle which the kids are loving.

There is something to be said for hanging out with your kids though, even if it’s just watching a movie or eating dinner or some other daily drudge type thing.

So, it probably won’t be another month until you hear from me again, but it wouldn’t surprise me either. I’m having gutters installed today. I’m talking to Dad about replacing the drywall in the front room, laying some new carpet and some other misc. household improvement items. I want to put up some real shelves too – get rid of the bookcase shelves. I just told Michael, if I can’t do the entire room at once, I can do a small part, right? Hey, a million pennies is 100,000 dollars, right? You gotta collect those one at a time.

I like to consider myself a strong individual. I am capable of living on my own (although I prefer not to). I am capable of looking after myself as well as taking care of others.

So why does the thought of losing my partner, my literal other half, scare me so much? I can’t imagine life without him. Last month I had nightmares that he was dead or dying and I had to manage without him. Realistic dreams of how would I handle the kids and where would our needed income come from and how would I even function without shutting down and not functioning. Michael told me I cuddled up to him that night and just held on.

I posted to FaceBook today that Michael told me he could not promise not to die as that would mean he would have to break a promise to me some day. Sweet in the telling but not so sweet in the facts.

This whole line of thought came about because his aunt on his mothers side was hospitalized yesterday for one thing and wound up having some heart complications on top of that. Michael mentioned to me that his grandfather died at 60(ish?) due to heart complications. He was a big man (6’7″?) and the weight to go with it and it was just too much on his heart in the end. It makes me look at Michael, a big man himself, and throws me into a whirlwind. We need to eat better. We need to exercise. I’m going to make him live forever, because for all of my knowledge that death comes for us all, I am still convinced I am going to live forever, and how can I do that without him? 60 for him is only 20 years from now.

I see my father, who lost his wife well before 60, and I wonder if one day I will be in the same position. Will my children come home to me? Will I have friends to surround myself with? Will I look down every day and see his art all over me and wish he was still here and wonder what I could have done to keep him here?

And then I shake my head and I remind myself that he is still here and 60 is a long way off and I will, in fact, make us live forever. And if I can’t, I can at least make it seem like it.

I just saw this in the July magazine and had to come speak up. I am a parent to five children ranging from 5 to 18, am heavily tattooed and married to a tattoo artist. I like to think I am a pretty responsible and trustworthy person, as is my husband.

I have five awesome, responsible, smart, funny, socially conscious children. One of the 18 y/o wants tattoos, one does not. The ten year old got his ears pierced at 8, when he could take care of them and not before (he had been asking for years before we allowed it). The two younger ones aren’t quite there yet. My youngest is a girl and absolutely will not have her ears pierced until she can take care of them (and yes, she has asked many times and can tell you now that she can’t have them until she can clean them).

Sometimes looks are indicative of everything, but often looks are indicative of nothing. Just because I have bright red hair and stretched ears and visible tattoos does not make me any better or worse than the person standing next to me and it makes me worry for our children, that we are teaching them to judge others at so early an age.

I hate seeing things like this. I thought we were over this. I thought we had so many more important things besides what people look like to worry about (um, hello, Gulf, giant oil spill anyone? Flooding? Earthquakes? Starving children in America?).

I understand that people judge. When I go on a job interview I want to put my best face forward. I wear my hair down over my ears. I wear long sleeves or a suit jacket. I don’t wear crocs and blue jeans and a wife beater; I wouldn’t do that if I weren’t tattooed either.

To judge a child’s “goodness” based on tattoos and/or piercings? How is that fair to the child? How is that fair to your child? Is your child a bad person for befriending someone with tattoos and/or piercings? I mean, let’s just go that extra step. If you are enough of a fuddy-duddy to think that it automatically makes for a bad kid, how good is your kid if they buddy up to the bad kid? Do you have that little faith in the parenting job you did that you feel your child is unable to judge for themselves because you didn’t teach them to well enough? And let’s touch on that for a minute. By the time your child would be bringing home a friend with body modifications I have to assume they are at least 15/16 years old, and likely at least 18 because that is the legal age to tattoo someone without parental consent. So by, let’s just call it 16, you have zero faith in your child’s ability to make an educated decision about who their friends are? I feel sorry you, if that’s the case. That is a huge parenting failure if you ask me. I may not like the friends the 18 year old brings home, but they aren’t knocking over convenience stores or doing drugs. I’m just old and don’t relate *laughs*

So getting back to me. Here I am. My ears are 3/4″ and I am visibly tattooed (pretty heavily at that) and my hair is three different shades of red. I’m not your typical 30-something, but I’m not so untypical either. I cloth diapered. I compost. I recycle. I breastfed. I babe-wore. I co-slept. I cook from scratch at least five nights a week. I schlep to ballet and tap and guitar and therapy and doctors and dentists and school. I’m not so different from you. My giant phoenix on my arm? Memorial to my sister who died a few years back. That bad ass bowling piece? A memorial for my mom who died a couple years after my sister. My ears? Started stretching them at 15. My  navel ring (the only piercing I have left, btw, that isn’t in my ears) I had done at 14. I begged for it. It’s still in. Yep, to you I am a fat, pushing middle-age, over-sized child who you probably think is clinging to her youth.

To me I am a beautiful goddess, transforming myself into who I am supposed to be right now.

I knew who I was fifteen years ago the same as I know who I am now, and will know who I am fifteen years from now; If you were afraid of who I was then you are probably still afraid of who I am now and who I will become. That makes me sad, because you are probably missing out on an amazing and loyal friend, all because you were afraid of something different. Do you really want your child to miss out on such an amazing person too, or make that person miss out on your child?

When my sister got sick, and I found myself with a house to help run, I took it one step at a time. When she died, and we had a funeral to plan, and a family to keep from falling apart, I took it one step at a time.

When my mom got sick, and I found myself with two extra children and a sick mom and a dad who did all right but wasn’t 100%, I took it one step at a time and I got us through today. Then I got us through tomorrow. When she got really sick and she died, I was still stepping.

A thousand other little things happened, and a thousand more will go wrong in the future, but the best you can do it put one foot in front of the other, take one step, and it’s one step closer to your next goal.

“The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” Lao Tzu

So, we’re all a part of the One Step tribe. We all know how hard life can be. We all continue to take that one extra step, and when we find we can’t, someone is there to help us go just a little further forward.

I have a friend who is on a massive One Step journey right now, and she has a lot of help staying her path. Thinking about her got me thinking about this. It might be time to ink my foot onto my body somewhere.

“The Torah reminds us 36 times that we must welcome and be kind to the stranger because we were strangers in the land of Egypt,” he said. “We have a cultural memory, a cultural and religious understanding of what it means to be marginal.”

Moving toward acceptance of different manifestations of gender, he said, isn’t limited to transgender people. “One of the myths that we’re taught is that gender is a fixed thing, and I don’t think it works that way. … It’s much more complicated than that.”

He cites men who want to stay home with their children, or women who want to take the position of breadwinner in the family as examples of people who don’t fit into traditional gender roles — and of whom he believes the Jewish community could be more accepting and supportive.

“Judaism teaches me to look at every single person as made in the image of God, even if that person’s experience is new or unfamiliar to me,” he said. “That’s a large part of what should teach us to be more welcoming to transgender people and many other people as well.”

I can’t tell you how much I love this. I am still at odds with my local group of Jews – I have a fundamental disagreements with the fundamentals – but overall, of all the religions I’ve studied, Judaism is one of my favourites. This just underlines that for me. I mean, his gender shouldn’t matter anyway, but with all the hate-mongering in the world, especially the hate-mongering in the religious communities, this makes me happy to read.

Anyway, when I was a little girl, and I passed by “wishing wells” (read: anything which caused me to beg for pocket change from my parents to throw away and make a wish) I’d throw in my pennies (nickels, dimes) and wish the same wish every time. I always wished Erin could walk and talk and be the kind of sister I could play with instead of play next to. Don’t get me wrong. We shared books, music, the television. She loved just hanging out, but it was a little one sided when it came down to it. My grandmother used to tell me how I would sit there and rub her legs and tell people we had to make them strong so she could walk.

Purpose of this overly emotional road trip?

I had the best dream last night. For some reason I can’t explain Erin was living in a residential home, which turned out to not be a bad thing. See, we showed up one day to visit, and out she comes with Jim (her boyfriend at school), walking. Not the easy gait of someone whose been walking since they were a year old. The uneasy, kind of stilted gait of someone who has recently learned how. Oh, I got the biggest hug and just started crying.

I have long said that since Erin died she is in a better place doing all the things she couldn’t do while she was here. I’m not big on god or heaven or hell. I’d like to think that when we die we move on to whatever is next. Death is just one stop in our journey. I’m not so sure about reincarnation as the only thing, but I think it might be an option. I believe the Universe as a whole wants us happy and healthy.

I haven’t had an Erin dream in a very long time. I can’t remember the last time, if ever, that I had one where she was walking. Even when I was a little girl, the Erin in my dreams was in a wheelchair. It has taken a long time, but I am so happy my wish has finally been granted. What a great way to start the day.

I haven’t posted it in a while, mainly because I’ve kind of switched gears to Autism. UCP is an excellent place to donate money to. Like all groups, there is always more money going out than coming in. I am a little biased and would love to see your charitable donation go directly to Delrey School, I think I spent as much time there as a child as I did at home. In the form, choose a local affiliate and then pick UCP of Maryland. Everyone dollar counts and the staff, kids and parents are so grateful for them.

You know, my husband is a tattoo artist. Not exactly Jewy, right? But he has a lot of Jewish clients. Many of them getting things on their bodies that declare their Judaism.

A friend of mine forever ago was entertaining getting a KforP on his hip, just inside the line of his briefs. I love the idea and have entertained it myself.

I don’t have any Jewish artwork on my body. No star of David’s. No chamsa’s. No nothing. In a way, I’ve violated “shall not mark your body for the dead” as my entire arm is “for the dead.” Oops.

On the flip side, Judaism is one of the only (is the only? I have no idea) that encourages you to ask questions. The Torah is being interpreted. Agai. Over and over, students and teachers debate over what it means, and what it can mean in the future. I love that Judaism itself requires you to question God and your faith and what it means.

I have weeks, months, years at a time that I am at odds with God. God dealt me a pretty poor hand, but in the same breath, the Universe provides, and always has. Thou Art God. I have a pretty jumbled mess that is my spirituality floating around in my brain. It’s a mess of Judaism, Paganism and bits and pieces that Heinlein gave words to but existed long before I read him.

I think… Judaism has always served it’s people, it’s people have not served it. And I think that is how it should be.

So why do I always feel so guilty when I hear people tell me it was “only two months” from discovery of whatever to death, when all I want to say is, I am sorry for your loss, but how fortunate you did not have to watch them die slowly and in pain. You should be happy their time left wasn’t spent wishing for death to come quickly, quicker than it was.

When my time comes, I hope it’s sudden. Maybe not as sudden as being squished under a bus, but sudden enough to not cause undue grief to my loved ones and not cause undue pain to me.