vBulletin tracker
You are here: Home / Archives for StaceyRobinson

Let’s Be Friends

July 29, 2011 By StaceyRobinson 3 Comments

As of this very minute, I have 599 friends. I know this, because Facebook has counted them for me. I’m astounded, mostly because I think that if you were to parade all 599 past me, I’d be hard pressed to identify them all.  If I were being brutally honest, I’d be hard pressed to identify them with the aid of name tags and someone whispering their names in my ear.  And because my friend count is so close to some arbitrary milestone of rampant popularity— as determined by me and chosen mainly because the number itself is easily divisible by one hundred and looks so large— I have stopped to give some thought to the close, personal relationships that comprise my life among the pixels of Facebook.

Facebook could not have appeared at a more propitious moment for me.  In late 2009, my world was in turmoil.   My divorce was being  finalized, every relationship I had was morphing faster than a popsicle melts, and I was questioning every aspect of my life.  What better hideout than Facebook, where I could journey in my personal Way-Back machine, revisiting all the major epochs and episodes of my life?   What magic: a hoard of half-remembered names from my past, clamoring to friend me, to reconnect and reminisce.  From one to many, in a virtual instant.

After hours ruminating on the nature of these friendships– pixelated, electronic versions of the real world— I have come to this conclusion:  with rare exception, I have the exact same relationships on Facebook with my 599 friends as I do in real life.

The vast majority of my Facebook friends are basically tangential to my virtual life, found in random posts and on random walls.  I say this with neither rancor nor condescension.  They are the childhood friends, acquaintances of adulthood, business contacts and distant relations, people I barely knew in the world of brick and mortar, and barely know now through bytes of ether.  There’s an occasional intersection, much like bumping into someone at the grocery store— a vaguely intimate startlement, quickly concluded.

Then there are friends from the distant fog of memory, people who at one point loomed large, then got unknowingly lost and are now found.  We spend an hour or two on the phone, or linger over lunch, catching up, playing “Remember When,” promising a next time.  But “next time” becomes like blue moons and flying pigs. We live our lives, we change and grow and become, and while we can look fondly at what our lives were, there may be a reason that we misplace and drift and move. So I appreciate the tenuous presence of all my pasts, smile at their postings— and remain contentedly distant.  And if I have some free-floating concerns that I am falling short in the keeping-up-with-friends ledger, I remind myself that my inbox isn’t exactly overflowing with inbound invitations.  Boundaries are set and lives are lived.

Of course, Facebook has become just one more channel of communications for my frequent flyer friends.  We talk and tweet and chat and ping.  We even see one another with some regularity.  Facebook allows us to be both more intimately connected and disconnected at the same time.  It’s all good.

So why maintain this cluttering of friends?  Because even among all that clutter, there are rare gifts of grace.  There are people who shift the pixels for the better.  They start on some distant shore and become solid; relationships that mostly didn’t exist before, but upon which I now depend.  They’re people I’ve known for forever— or at least known of.  They are  surprises, joined less by nostalgia and chance encounter and more by shared joy, shared sorrow, intertwining lives.   These friends are real and solid for all that they are ones and zeroes.  They are gifts, unexpected, unlooked for.  And my 600th friend, or the next or the next may be one more exception, one more gift of grace. And that will make all the difference.

Friend me on Facebook, or read more about my search for connection here: www.staceyzrobinson.blogspot.com

(Image from wikipedia)

Filed Under: Relationships Tagged With: , , , ,

The World According to Me

June 6, 2011 By StaceyRobinson Leave a Comment

For about five minutes, several years ago, the title on my business cards was to have been She Ra Princess of Power.  Really.  We were re-tooling the department, brainstorming new titles that would better describe our actual job functions.  I suggested She Ra, because, well, I figured I was that all-powerful.  That, and because I wanted a tiara and a sash.

Up on the white board it went.  And there it stayed, until someone suggested a few more business-like titles.  What stuck was Strategic Relationship Manager.  Utilitarian, sure, but with little pizzazz.   I told everyone the story though, of how I got to be She Ra, Princess of Power for a little while.  I say all this because, deep down, I really do believe I am She Ra.  Or at least that I have She Ra-like powers. Mostly.   There are times when I want to shout “If you’d just do it my way, the world run so much smoother!”  And by the world, I of course mean my life:  if you all would just follow my rules, my world would run infinitely better.

Really.  They’re not difficult rules.  Here’s a sample:

If God had meant for their to be flavored coffee, God would have created flavored coffee beans.  Cream is acceptable.  However, if you add whipped cream, you now have a milkshake, not coffee.  Even if it’s hot.

Drive-through lanes were invented for speed and convenience.  They are not designed for question-and-answer hour.  Seriously— when’s the last time the menu changed in any meaningful way?  It’s a burger.  Or chicken nuggets.  Or fries.  Move on.  Drive through.  Oh, and this doesn’t mean drive-and-then-stop-and-check-your-order or contemplate-just-how-hot-that-coffee-is.  It’s hot; trust me.  Put the cup in the cup-holder and drive.

Lettuce doesn’t belong on a sandwich.  Ever.  It is slippery.  No good can ever come from a slippery sandwich.

You are not the arbiter of how fast the fast lanes on the highway should be.  If you find yourself zipping along in the far left lane, happy in your three-miles-over-the-posted-speed-limit haze, oblivious that the car behind you is all but kissing your bumper, and more cars zoom past you on the right (some of whose occupants are looking decidedly annoyed, and some gesticulating madly, one finger at a time)— move over.  Highway driving is a cooperative effort, people.  Cooperate.

You’re not so special or so important that you cannot wait the extra two minutes and NOT block the intersection.  And stop being fake-surprised when motorists with the actual right-of-way give you snarky looks.  You drove into that intersection precisely so you would get caught and wouldn’t have to wait for the next one.

Regardless of ever-changing grammatical rules, irregardless is not a word.  Ever.  And while we’re at it— “your” is NOT the same as “you’re,” and there’s a difference between “who” and “whom.”   Likewise there, their and they’re take some thought.  There’s no excuse for bad grammar or bad spelling— even while texting.

I am all for your religious beliefs.  Have at ‘em.  Practice with all the fervor and passion and joy you can muster.  Do not, however, mistake your faith for my fact.    Feel free to do or not do as your God commands, but don’t legislate those thou shalts and thou shalt nots for the rest of us.

Simple rules, right?  Follow them, and the world continues to spin on its axis, and I don’t spin like a mad dervish, riffing on some nefarious infraction or misstep.  I can be a benevolent Princess of Power, as long as you play by the rules.  My rules.  It always comes back to that.

Here’s the thing though: I’d give them all up, every single one of my beloved rules, if we could all practice these:

Patience.  Tolerance.  Kindness.  Love.

Let’s face it: we all have our own battles to fight and demons to exorcize.  It costs us nothing to comfort or care.  Indeed, a kind word can heal a broken heart or give hope where once there was none.

Even She Ra, in all her glorious power, can’t hold a candle to that.

Interested in reading more about the world according to Stacey?  Check it out here.

Filed Under: Humor, Misc, Opinion, Uncategorized

Adventures in Single Parenting

May 23, 2011 By StaceyRobinson 2 Comments

I got The Call this morning.  No, not a Divine Call to join some religious order or nunnery.  Wrong religion, wrong calling.  Although, come to think of it, that may have been an easier call to have received.  Me and God, we’re tight these days, and I enjoy semi-regular chats with Him/Her.  It was also not the call of the wild, or, sadly, even a call from a telemarketer.  No, I got the Call From School.  My son, far from being sick or being awarded some educational accolade, was being given a detention.  Dammit.

I know, I know: it’s really no big deal.  He’s twelve.  It’s a detention, not hard time on a chain gang.  But, well— it’s a detention.  It’s one more thing I have to deal with.

My first impulse was to reach for my dog-eared copy of The Rule Book: A Parent’s Handy Dandy Guide to Raising Perfect Children.  Oh wait— there is no such book.  Or, if there is, I must have been out grabbing a cup of coffee when They (the omnipotent, omnipresent They)— I was out when all the other parents were getting their copies.  As an added bonus, I had apparently also been absent when They handed out The Single Parent’s Guide as part of the divorce decree.  I was on my own.  Again.

Ah— the joy of single parenting.  It hits at oddly, all sideways and slanted and so totally unexpected.  They say that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you makes you stronger.  Right.  At this point, I am Atlas, and all I want to do is shrug.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love my son, fiercely, unconditionally, wholely.  There is nothing I would not do for him.  But these moments, where I am so certain that I’ve committed some grievous parenting error, provided him with fodder for future therapy sessions, these are the moments I would gladly trade.  These are the times I want to call for a timeout.  The Universe is less than obliging.

This isn’t big stuff.   Hell, the big stuff is easy. I am the Fixer of Broken Things.  So I fix.  I act.  I do. You shoulder the big stuff because you can’t do anything less.  I never realized that it would be these small moments that would trip me up, leave me clueless and frustrated and slightly panicked.  You find out the hard way, when it’s 10:00 and you realize you’ve run out of cream for tomorrow’s coffee.  It’s that chasm of infinite guilt as you send your kid off to school with that nasty, nagging cough because you have a meeting that you just can’tmiss.  It’s not signing up for Little League because you work and who calls a practice at 4:00 in the afternoon for God’s sake, and hearing your son say, as you drive past the ball field, in that voice that’s way too mature: “It’s ok, Mommy.  Maybe next year.”  It’s going it alone, again, ever and always, as you try to navigate through all the lonely, silent days.  It’s the easy stuff, the quiet stuff that makes it hard to breathe sometimes.

The falling apart comes later.   It comes in the long, dark night of the soul, when I lie sleepless and wide-eyed and still.  It is the silent rant against my Ex, who of course is absent, of course deflects and defers and derails, who doesn’t realize that twelve year olds are like puppies: you have to discipline them now because in two days it will be meaningless, they will have forgotten their misdemeanor, will have forgotten their remorse, but whom you want, please God, just this once, to show up.

And then I remember: it is a detention, nothing more.  Time served, punishment meted.  Small stuff.

For all that it can be sad and lonely and silent, it is small stuff.  And when I gather in all these moments– not just the minor panic and small fears, but the triumphs and joys, too— I get a life.  My life.  Far from perfect, far from solitary.  Filled with everything and then some.  I remember that it is all small stuff and I am filled.

Go here to read more adventures in parenting and life and faith.

Filed Under: Parenting, Uncategorized

Crossroads

May 11, 2011 By StaceyRobinson 2 Comments

I have a friend who is going through some big and scary stuff: life-altering, soul-changing, potentially transformative and possibly transcendant stuff.   “I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know what will happen.  I feel so alone,” she said.   Her pain was palpable.

God, I know that place.  That sticky, scary place.  Crossroads?  I wish it were as simple as that!  That place isn’t a fork in the road; it is a whole service for twelve, all jumbled and junk drawer worthy, a snake pit of messy choice.  It isn’t dark.  Dark implies the possibility of something not-dark.  This is the total absence of light.  It is a teetering precipice, the pain of the present licking at your feet, coiling upwards, the fear of the unknown breathing hot and harsh on your skin.

This place is alone.

Her words take me back to my early days in a twelve step recovery program.  I spent hours in the rooms, on beat-up couches, drinking horrible coffee, breathing in air that reeked of cigarette smoke and bleach.  Hours upon hours of shiny happy people and their endless chatter, who had miraculously been plucked from the depths of their despair and given new life.   New hope.  And they passed it on to me.  Headier than any wine, more intoxicating than any drink I’d ever guzzled.  Hope.  In the telling of their stories, I found hope.

“I’ve been there,” they all said, in some iteration or other.

No fanfare, no drama.  Just this quiet moment of intimate connection.  They’d all been there— that same place where I had stood, rooted and lost and broken and alone.  It may have looked different from the outside– some talked of boardrooms on Wall Street, others of a curb along Madison Avenue– those exteriors were facades that hid our utter devastation from public view.  How could I not find healing in these words?  How could I not take hope?  They sat pretty comfortably in their own skins, putting one foot in front of the other.  Moving, acting, choosing, deciding.  Feeling.  Feeling everything.  Not drinking.  Not drinking.  And they shared that all, with me, with each other, every day, endlessly, hour after hour.  It got so I believed I could do all that too.

And then they left and I went home.  Alone.   Home, to an empty apartment that echoed.   Home, to sit and think and climb the walls, to feel the silence pound.  While I didn’t crawl into a bottle, I climbed into my head, taking strange refuge in that nightmare landscape.  In the end, I stand here alone. For all their laughter and sharing and connection, I come home alone.  And who will be there to catch me when I fall, when I fail?

I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know what will happen.  I feel so alone.

That place.  That fear.  That place that is absent of light.  I know this place all too well.

In the end, we are all of us alone.  But here’s the miracle, that bit of grace within that singular moment of clarity: there are breadcrumbs.  Strewn along that rocky, tortuous, treacherous path, with all its traps and quicksand and trails that go nowhere and the scary monsters who hide behind poison-spitting trees, there are breadcrumbs.   There are stories and connections and hope, left for us by those who’ve gone before.  And if we’re lucky— really, really lucky— there are hands to hold in the darkness, torches placed along the way.

Yes, I take my leaps alone.  Yes, even now, I can stand rooted in the muddy, messy Middle, unable to go back, afraid to move forward.  But there is hope.  Grace.  Hands to hold, torches that shine.  And should I fail, should I fall, I will be caught.  God, or some Higher Power whose name I don’t yet know will allow me rest and comfort until I’m ready to go it again.

I’m here, I tell my friend.  Feel free to fly, to fall.  To hope.  I’ve been there my friend.  I’ll be waiting for you, breadcrumbs in hand,  and hope enough to share.

Read more about Stacey’s forays into hope and the unknown here: http://staceyzrobinson.blogspot.com

Filed Under: Motivate, Spirituality, Uncategorized Tagged With:

A Light in the Darkness

April 21, 2011 By StaceyRobinson 4 Comments

Long ago, I quit Graduate School to become a political activist.  I had been working on my PhD in Early Modern English History.  Tudors and Stewarts and Puritans, oh my!  I was gung-ho, until I realized that almost the only people who care about Early Modern English History are other Early Modern English historians.  I gave up my full Fellowship to–as my parents so eloquently put it– become a professional street walker and beggar.

I was filled with the passion to fight the Good Fight.  I was Don Quixote, but I was going to win my battles rather than tilt at stray windmills.  Five years and several thousand miles later, having traversed the country a dozen or so times, I quit the national poor people’s organization for whom I had been working, a little bedraggled, a lot broke and much bewildered.  I kept looking around for all that I had accomplished, that we, as an organization, had accomplished, and saw… the detritus of really good intentions.

We fought to give people a voice, to find power in numbers.  We got a few stop signs.  A handful of crack houses boarded up or torn down.  We got enough press that Mayors and Police Chiefs learned to take our calls and listen to our demands.  Mostly though— we demonstrated on bread and butter issues that fed our souls and fired us up.  I was so determined to Save The World and Make A Difference, but I was drowning in a sea of windmills and broken lances.

The issues that plagued us twenty-five years ago, when I was young(er) and rousing rabble eighty hours a week or more— they’ve grown.  The rift between the Haves and the Have Nots is wider and more treacherous than ever.  Poverty.  Ignorance.  Hunger.  Disease.  Global Warming.  Hatred.  War.  Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?  I wish.  They are legion, these Horsemen, and they spread devastation in their wake.  They’ve had a few millenia to gain in power and scope.  Human history is the story of our inhumanity, a desolate and sere desert of indifference and despair.  My fear whispers for me to throw up my hands in surrender to the enormity of the task, to just walk away.  The need is so great.  I could be devoured by this need that grows daily and swallows hope.

It would be so easy to turn away from this overwhelming need.

I could, but I don’t.  Instead, I do what I can.  I light a candle, a flicker of hope in this darkness, the flutter of a butterfly’s wings that becomes a storm.  The task may seem insurmountable, but I can’t avoid it.  The Talmud tells us: “It is not your duty to complete the work, neither are you free to desist from it.” (Pirke Avot, 2:16,15)

My job, as I see it, as I have been taught, is to light the candles and flap my wings.  Again and again and again— because I can, because I must.  Because I change the world every time I do.  And all those candles, mine and yours and on and on— they light the darkness and beat back despair.  They kindle hope:  A stop sign.  A voice.  Hope where there once was none.  It is the best of our humanity.

Are we our brother’s keepers?  Yes.  I believe that having a roof over your head is a right, not a privilege, that access to medical care, or clean water to drink, or food on the table— all of that is a right, not a privilege.  And no: I don’t have an answer on how to pay for all this; I just know that we must.  It is our humanity at stake, and how could I turn away?  How could I look into my son’s eyes if I turned my back on such need? How can I not pass this candle flame to him?

My son, my twelve year old— he wants to house the poor and feed the hungry and fight for justice.  And he has learned that he has his own candles to light.  And he does— because he can, because he must, because he, too, can save the world.

Read more from Stacey on her personal site.

Filed Under: Motivate, Opinion, Spirituality

Seasonal Delusions

April 13, 2011 By StaceyRobinson 3 Comments

I drove home with the windows rolled down today.  I even complained that the sun was way too bright.  When I got home, I turned off the heat and threw open the windows.  Well, a window, at least.

Dangerous.  There is definite danger here, in all this sun and warmth.  There is a quickening, along with a need to bask.  A contradiction, yes, but both desires fight for an outlet in this suddenly changing and warming world.

There’s more light now, and of a different kind.  Winter light is watery and weak, a pale shade of yellow that barely illuminates a world leached of color.  It is all grays and browns and pale, pale yellow.  Here in March, the light seems to stretch in its intensity.  Sunsets stain the sky with peach and purple and rose-gold; a Maxfield Parrish canvas that glows from within.  There is an impatience this time of year, a hurry-up-gotta-go-gotta-move kind of feeling, a heady mix of rising temperatures, rich, loamy smells and a return of glorious color.

The orange signs are back.  They litter every roadway from here to there, and back again.  They trumpet the return of Chicago’s other season: not winter, but construction.  They promise delay in the guise of improvement.  No matter; with the return of warm weather, the roads are clogged to capacity anyway, a rush of humanity intent on breaking out of their self-imposed hibernation, intent on basking in speed and exhaust and sunlight, grateful to be anywhere that is outside, that is away, that is not layered under mounds of outerwear and cocooned in underwear.

People fill the roads, the parks, the paths and the sidewalks.  Their thoughts turn to visions of growing things and churning rich black soil, to open flames of gas grills and open windows in cars. They move faster, they smile more.  They talk about spring.  Incessantly.  On and on and on.  They chatter in their excitement, a steady, buzzy drone of the wonders of things to come.

The problem, and it’s one of astronomical proportions, is that it is April.  April, in the midwest.  It is not spring.  Not here.  And no matter what the calendar says, no matter that the equinox happened on March 20, no matter that I drove with the windows rolled down today, it is not spring, and it won’t be for months.

You heard me: months.

This thaw, this blip on the space-time continuum is nothing more than Mother Nature’s tease.  It happens every year: a thaw, brief and intense and intoxicating as wine, that allows crocuses to bloom and barbeques to smolder, that lulls us into a sense that the back of winter has been broken at last— this thaw comes in on a breeze. leaving us hopeful and stumbling out of our dormancy.  Then, quick as breath, as warmth and light— it’s gone, leaving us once more in the grips of a lingering, bone-chilling winter.

We gasp in disbelief, year after year.  Wait, we cry, it was spring; I swear it was.  I walked without a coat!  I felt the warmth of the sun!  Where the hell did this snow come from? We midwesterners forget the lingering death of winter.  We forget that temperatures will rise and fall on a dime until long after the groundhog checks out its chubby silhouette.  The trees may bud, a thin patina of green may creep stealthily onto dormant shrubs and trees, but leaves don’t burst forth until mid-May.  Tulips and daffodils be damned: spring is still a far distant shore.

And yet: I drove home with the windows rolled down and felt the warmth of the sun on my face.  I know that winter merely plays hide and seek with its cousin spring.  I know that the cold will slither in on bitter winds off the Lake, and snow will again skitter madly down torn-up roads and pile against orange and white construction barrels.

But I’ll take this warmth, this breath of spring.  I’ll store it up, and wait, with growing impatience, like Persephone, until I am released from winter’s captivity to bask briefly in the glory of warmth and light and spring.

Read more from Stacey on her personal site.

Filed Under: Humor

Unemployment and the search for good television.

March 23, 2011 By StaceyRobinson 3 Comments

I am completely caught up with all of my television programs.

All of them.  All eleventy-seven hundred programs covering heart-warming dramas; scathingly sarcastic comedies; diseases of the week.  An occasional news program sneaks in to keep my brain from turning to complete mush.

Between my DVR, my cable provider’s on-demand system and an online watch-all-the-tv-shows-you-want-for-free site, I have caught up with them all.  Sigh.

Oh, and the dishes are done.  They are piled high, threatening to tumble.  They’re done, not put away. I’d like to say that the beds are made, floors mopped, clothes washed.  Not so much.  For now, the tv is watched and the dishes are done.

God, I need a job.

It’s not like I haven’t tried to find a job.  Early on, I’d spring out of bed, marshall my son through breakfast and meds and shoes and where are your keys and c’mon, let’s go!  I’d rush back home to sit at the computer for what seemed like eons, sending out resume after resume.  Energetic.  Industrious.  Hopeful.

At first, the recruiters would call.  “I saw your resume and wanted to talk to you.  Is now good?”  They were hopeful, too.  They were hopeful I was experienced enough, that I was cheap.  Like Goldilocks, they were looking for Baby Bear, who was just right.  Turns out, I’m not– I’m too old, too experienced and way too expensive for most of the jobs posted.  The calls would end awkwardly, abruptly. ”Well, we have your information on file. If something turns up, I’ll give you a call!”  Right.

Now, even the random recruiter calls are drying up.  I send out resumes into the great big black whole of unemployment hell.  No contacts.  No phone numbers.  No way to follow up other than telepathy and wishful thinking.  Damn.  Just hour after hour, job board after job board.  Resume after resume after resume.

The silence is deafening.  The panic is just below skin level: that sub-atomic, just-barely-heard drone that sets your teeth on edge.  There may be an inch or two of wall that I have not explored in intimate detail as I climb them mindlessly.

In a culture where we define so much of who we are by what we do, I ask myself (when it gets too quiet, when I can’t keep the panic at bay) “Who the hell am I?”

There are a thousand answers that I could offer.  I am a mom.  A teacher.  A student.  A seeker.  A fixer of broken things.  A writer.  A singer.  All of them are true.  All of them involve, to my mind, sacred and holy work.  Really.  But I don’t look at them as “real” jobs.  They’re all kinda fake or slightly less-than. For me.  For you, they are challenging and fulfilling professions.

For me? They are filler, until I get a real job.  One that gets me out of the house and saps my energy and drains my creativity and gets me to complaining and leaves me sleepless and pays the bills.  Sacred and holy are all well and good, until you get the red notice from the electric company.

I need a job.  At a time when I should be redoubling my efforts, I am slowing down, getting trapped in pixels and sound bytes.  The couch calls to me, a siren song of mind-numbing sweetness.  I am fascinated with facebook and twitter, living life 140 characters at a time.   It is so much more satisfying than rejection.  And really, I can’t even say I’m facing rejection: I am all but invisible.  I would have to be acknowledged to be rejected.

I will find a job.  I have to.  I have bills to pay, a child to feed.  In the meantime, I will muddle through all my fake jobs and send out tiny beacons of light into the black hole of resume hell.  I will shake the trees and beat the paths and stare down the fear and panic of my joblessness.  I will do the work of finding work, and look forward to the day when I have dishes in the sink and my DVR is full.

Read more from Stacey on her personal site.

Related Posts with Thumbnails
Filed Under: Humor, Motivate