Interesting Times

Although I have found many subjects worthy of commentary, I haven't been wanting to blog recently. Most of them seem too sensitive, or more correctly, I am too sensitive. I love blog therapy, writing it all out for the constructive process of illuminating the issues for myself, but I have to remind myself I do have a few readers and they already know a lot more about my internal monologues than they probably want to know.

My relationships seem really complicated, not so much my personal relationships but the ones I have with the several membership groups I am involved in. Saturday Market is just jamming as summer bloomed so rapidly and everyone emerged, blinking, into the light. Saturday is an emotion-packed day, with the vexing end seeming to be me getting trapped into unwelcome conversations with drunken or similarly impaired men who think I am *handsome* as I heard yesterday. Dude, I know I am not pretty, at 63, but don't do this. You already observed that I did not need a man as I packed up my stuff, yet you still tried to help me. I am going to have to perfect more defensive techniques, sadly. Raven says just put my courage on the end of my sword and wield it. Instead of shutting down when (people, but mostly men) try to manipulate me, poke them with the sword a little. "Move along, please, I'm working." Or not even please. Just be as rude as they are. I already have learned to never, ever give them my name. It seems I have more problems with this now than I did as a young person, maybe because men my age are far more desperate than younger men, and maybe because I just keep hoping it will go away rather than perfecting skills to deal with it directly.

But all that is outside the real roles I play and those are the complexity. Not only am I a regular seller at the events my groups sponsor, but I am a longterm one. That means I remember how it used to be, maybe even helped set it up that way. I had my zero days at Market when the fee was only $3.50 and it still felt bad to pay it. I snuck into the OCF long long ago before I learned how to participate. I've made most of the common mistakes and had most of the common misconceptions, and I still don't get it right every time.

I even had one zero day last year at the Tuesday Market when we were trying hard to survive across the street from the farmers. I'm not selling at the Tuesday Market this month. It feels strange. I don't know if I will again. Our two organizations are friends again, and are engaging in some dialogue, but we're still *complicated.* I love the farmers. Even though I grow much of my own produce, I get most of the food I buy at the LCFM. It's essential to me. Yet I am mostly on the outside, looking in.

With both SM and OCF (and in the past with LCFM too), I am also a contractor, in that I make things for the organizations, and get paid to do it. Not quite an employee, but in a subservient relationship of sorts. They are both stellar to deal with, btw. Always so respectful of the self-employed, they always pay me right away and contracts are clear and thoughtful. I have zero complaints, and love the opportunities. I want to leave them feeling the same way about me, professionally and personally. I care deeply about my business reputation and performance, so the physical limitations of my body as I age concern me. At some point I will have to step out of these roles. Maybe I can manage for another decade. That will also change the relationships with the people who contract with me, and that will be difficult I suppose. Maybe I'll get a gold watch, but probably how these things go normally is they just stop calling at some point, or I retire. Usually contracts end with no fanfare or even mutual appreciation. Guess we'll see. Meanwhile, thank you so much for helping to keep me alive. I particularly appreciate the loyalty of all of my customers last year when I had the broken heel. That was inconvenient to say the least. But this year things are going well!

And then, because I have been here awhile, I am an elder and a volunteer. I'm an officer (Secretary) of the Market, and on the Craft Committee at Fair. I take minutes at meetings, I'm on the Kareng Fund Board, and I do various other volunteer activities as they present themselves. I do a lot of unpaid work for the Jell-O Show too, and all of it is fun, and all I do by choice. I'm happy to serve, and I'm sure I do a lot less volunteering than many, many people in our community. It does take a toll, though.

Listening to the Dalai Lama the other day I was reminded of some of my continuing misconceptions and issues. I tend to dismiss the options of asking for help or advice, and just fall into my patterns unconsciously. One of my worst patterns is that I assume things and then run with them. As you might imagine this causes me to often range far afield emotionally, with absolutely no real facts to take me there. A particular bugaboo for me is that in a situation where I do reach out and don't receive a response, I immediately decide that I am not worthy of the person's notice, that I have not been heard, and that I need to try something else. Another person would make a second inquiry, but I rarely do. Rather than the uncomfortable checking things out, I just go farther into whatever plan I have hatched, without feedback, or worse, imagining the feedback I would have received. The non-response bugs me royally and it is a condition of email and the speed of our world, and I need to adapt to it.

Rude awakenings often result when my fantasy scenarios collide with the other party's reality. That happened this week and tweaked me right into my worst emotional suitcases. Fortunately I have learned the tiny subtle signs of this journey and can usually arrest myself in the earlier stages and then just have to process the embarrassment and hurt, and things don't usually escalate into confrontation or tears or excessive drama. Generally the other person is not even aware of my whole process, they just think I am somewhat wacky and turn aside to their other concerns (I assume), but it erodes my credibility in those other realms I mentioned, the business sides, and it bothers me a lot. My people skills need work.

I have got to learn to not be afraid to ask direct questions and make assertive statements. I've got to make myself polish, and take with me, that sword. I watch young people do this all the time, very well, and think some of it is just the holdover of attitudes toward women from the fifties. From the century that is over, as HH said. We will soon say bye-bye. I think young women are so much more free of these internal restrictions than I am. Maybe I can take some lessons from the women of  my son's generation, as I do from him. I'll try to pay better attention.

I can operate in the big boys club, if I do what they do: pose with strength and bravado, and fake it until you make it your own. All the men I told my story to went right back to one of the first actions I took, which was an attempt to protect someone's status and not embarrass them, and stated what a man would do. And it made perfect sense. I was nurturing and protective of the other people, but not me.

That, unfortunately, is part of the legacy I struggle to carry this Mother's Day. I got the parts of motherhood HH spoke of, I loved abundantly and relentlessly and I protected and served and put my own needs aside for the twenty years of my son's childhood, and that is a hard role to extricate one's self from. I was a good mother, but that sexism that I carried that made me defer to others, particularly men, has never really been eradicated from my deepest-set behaviors. I don't even want to offend the damn drunks who prey on me at the end of my working day. I don't even want to point out to people when their treatment of me feels like bullying. I just want to run away to safety, when creating my greater safety is the challenge.

My accommodating nature takes it back on myself,  as I spin trying to apologize and explain and redeem myself for what is mainly just a bad set-up in my complicated life. The big boys will be in charge for some time yet. The meek inherit nothing. No one is in place to assert for me, nor do I want to appoint someone to be my protector and advocate (though I wish I could.) I'm on my own, and I can do it. I can make my life work better, have done and will do. I'm in charge because I want to be, and I have earned it.

When I step into the realms where I am not in charge, I need to bring my sword and my strength and feel the legions of strong women behind me. We are far more powerful than we even want to be. It takes a lot of courage to be powerful and thoughtful, and still nurturing and kind and gentle. I'm better at it than I give myself credit for, when I don't snap back into that childhood pattern of helplessness.

We ask that of our men, and we ask that of our leaders, and we need to also ask that of ourselves. It is not enough to just be a good Mom, we have to step up and be far more powerful than is comfortable. I can tell myself to do this, and sign up for the pain and discomfort, because I have been around long enough to know that scuttling back into my cave of safety just doesn't bring the big changes I need. I have to speak for me.

I'm going to work on it. I'm going to give myself more credit and speak more clearly, even if it brings some tears. Everything takes practice. It does not matter if it takes a lifetime or a moment.

I'm going to practice on some drunk guy next week if I get the chance. I'm going to find a way to be strong while still having compassion for his humanity. He's the one acting predatory. I'm not going to be the one acting like prey.

And that is my summation of Mother's Day emotions for the moment. I love my mother so very deeply, and I love the ways she has taught and supported me so thoroughly for so long. She did everything she could to teach me these things by example and thoughtful listening. It's up to me to learn the rest. I will.

Thank you Mom, and thank you Son, for all of the ways mothering made me a good person to be in this world doing the things I do. We're successful. We're powerful. We're happy. Even through the complicated times.