Elizabeth Lithgow's Blog

May today there be peace within. May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others. May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.

Stalker?

Due to circumstances beyond my control, a kid from my high school, it seems, thinks I'm stalking him. It started last summer when I approached him in the cafe where we both went daily. I saw him there so often that one day I smiled and said hello.

Days later, I passed him on the street. Our eyes met and he froze as if I were wielding a dead rabbit, then, in one Charlie Chaplinesque move, he swung around and pressed his face into a bookstore window. He was so clearly trying to avoid me, I was tempted to sidle right up to him and stare at the books too.

We had dozens of similar unfortunate run-ins, during which he seemed increasingly dismayed to see me, culminating in one terrible moment of shock and horror for both of us, when we both walked into the tennis pro shop and I realized that he had just moved into my neighborhood, and joined my tennis team.

Maybe this boy can simply sense that deep down there's a little stalker in me. I started in elementary school, calling a boy named Cory and hanging up when he answered. I did it so much, I still know his phone number by heart. Since Cory, I've gone through boy-friends' wallets and desks and even one journal where I read a rather disturbing entry about my "heinous obsession with chinese take-out and old-man music."

Thanks to the internet, stalking has changed a lot since grade school. The latest technology has made it easier, more instantly gratifying, and therefore more addictive than ever. With one click on that glorious little magnifying glass icon on our computer screens, life becomes as entertaining as reality TV while we learn seemingly everything there is to know about celebrities, the boss, the guy you're considering going out for cocktails with, that is if his MySpace page is creative enough and he doesn't have too many video games on his online shopping "Wish List."

I know one high-profile business man, a multimillionaire, who obsessively peruses another of his colleague's golf scores on a site for golfers, and an author who follows other writers' Amazon ratings like it's the Dow Jones.

As women, stalking is in our biological makeup. It's the latest manifestation of the whole hunter/gatherer thing. Women are, by nature, gatherers--of information too. It comes down to survival, but instead of peering into the next cave at who is dragging whom by the hair, we sit at our computer in the privacy of our home or office.

We stalk to get the facts we need. We stalk because we live in a society where we can't help but compare ourselves to everyone else all the time. I say stop feeling guilty about it. Everybody does it. It's simply impossible not to.

Sometimes...

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the person I was born to be, if the life I'm living really is the one I was meant to, or if it is some half-life, a mutation engineered by loss, fueled only by the will to survive.

Beliefs

I believe in snow days.

I believe that a pinky swear should be legally binding. 

I believe that a hot bath and a long nap can cure just about anything. 

I believe that a new pair of shoes 

will cure what a nap/bath can't.

I believe I am a really good driver, 

despite all evidence to the contrary. 

I believe in _mess and ^chaos.

I believe that the world isn't nearly as bad 

as they paint it to be.

I believe that all of us get lost in the darkness.

I believe in ^(((angels))).

I believe that  

men can change...

if they really want to.

I believe that the toughest part of life is deciding 

when to give up and 

when to try harder.

 I believe in love and passion; 

romance and madness. 

I believe that the first song you hear in the morning has the power to determine how the rest of your day will pan out.

I believe that it's not always now or never.

I believe that you're lucky if

 the one you love and the one who loves you

are the same person.

I believe that the best way to celebrate a sunny day is with a sunny dress.

I believe in brotherly love

and sibling rivalry.

I believe that in the future, you can only fight to save 

someone else.

I believe that we are compelled to do 

what we have been

forbidden to do.

I believe that when you don't know where you're headed,

you'll find places no one else would ever think to explore.

I believe that nothing is ever as perfect as you imagine it.

I believe in the power of 

Impulse Buying and Retail Therapy.

I believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

I believe that all the effort in the world won't matter if you're 

not inspired.

Tears

Usually

I can feel them coming,

feel them swirling in my chest

like a swarm of angry bees,,

buzzing through my throat

and filling my head,

till it feels like a balloon 

getting ready to burst.

Usually

there's time to at least try to stop them

before they sting out through my eyes

and slip down my cheeks like hot wax.

But not this time.

Two Hearts

The more I think about it, the more I begin to believe that it is possible for one to be in love with more than one person at one time. As crazy as it may sound, I think that sometimes your heart tries to outsmart your brain. Your heart tells you that you love them (both of them) in very different, distinct ways, and that this is alright. Then your brain cuts in and tries to tell you that it just isn't right; that you are only allowed to have one and that you have to choose between the two. Your heart feels one way, while your brain knows another. You can't think with your brain and feel with your heart at the same time. You must choose between the two.

Let's say, for example, that you have this friend named George. You've known George for as long as you can remember, and you wouldn't have it any other way. Your parents love him and they almost consider him part of the family. He's a hopeless romantic, and he loves you. He's athletic, rather attractive, and incredibly intelligent. He's always around when you need him and knows when you'd rather tough things out on your own. He's the kind of guy that you can talk to for hours, never running out of things to say. He's ridiculously stubborn, but in the end, he just wants you to be happy. You can't imagine living life without him. You love him.

And then there's Brandon. Brandon's gorgeous and always knows exactly what to say to make you smile. He's silly and sincere and you feel safe when you're with him. He makes fun of you when you say something stupid, and takes care of you even when you tell him you don't need help. He's the type of guy who'll throw rocks at your window in the middle of the night just so he can talk to you. You feel comfortable being silent around him; you don't feel the need to fill the air with meaningless blabbering. He's never really told you the way he truly feels about you, but you're almost positive that he loves you. You love him more than anything, and he knows this.

So, how do you choose which one is better for you? Can you ever truly choose who you love more? How does one make this type of decision?

Scars

People have scars in all types of odd places. Like secret maps to our personal history, these diagrams of all our old wounds don’t always go away. Sure, most of them heal leaving nothing behind but a faint scar. But sometimes they don’t. Some wounds we carry with us everywhere.

It seems like an ordinary day. It usually is, I think, when your life changes. Nobody seems to be doing anything particularly important when the carefully placed pieces of their life collapse. It’s one of those days that, at the time, seems infinite because of the lack of anything to be said or done. My brother, Mattie, and I have just gotten home from school. We come into the house through the garage and are surprised to find the kitchen empty. Our kitchen, with its thick white cabinets and rich taupe walls, which is usually filled with laughter and the smell of freshly baked cookies, today sits empty. The television in the family room is turned off and the newspaper is sitting on the coffee table unread. The dog walks solemnly over to my brother, waits for his typical afternoon treat and, after receiving his snack, retreats to the couch for a mid-day nap.

We drop our bags and head upstairs to get changed for tennis practice. When I get back downstairs, my mother is standing at the kitchen sink. With her back towards me and her head tilted down, I can tell she’s fiddling with something. “Mom…” I say quietly. She turns to face me and at that very moment, I know something is terribly wrong.

Her eyes are tired, but she still manages to look beautiful as all mother’s do to their children. Her hands are the perfect balance of weakness and strength. It seems like the dishrag in her hands holds on to her just as firmly as she holds onto the rag. She’s faking a smile, and doing a horrible job of it. It has been my experience that it is nearly impossible to hide the fact that you have just been crying. My mother tries valiantly but is failing miserably.

Mattie tumbles down the stairs a moment later and finds me, his seventeen year old sister, sobbing in the arms of our mother. “Daddy’s sick.” My mother hesitates, “They’ve found a small tumor in his pancreas.” Her voice is soft and shaky. “It’s cancer.” Those words ring in my head as the tears begin to gather in my eyes. My knees buckle and my hands shake, trying desperately to find a stable surface to lean up against. The overpowering smell of rubbing alcohol that seems to smother you just before you begin to cry is coming on strong. My throat swells as I try to choke down saliva. I can barely breathe.

Seeing Mattie cry only makes things worse. My brave brother, with his long legs and thick hands, who wakes up late on weekdays, brushes his hair with a wet comb, eats Cheerios and makes me rush him out the door on the way to school, today is sitting on the hard-wood floors of our kitchen. With my back against the cool white cabinets, I slide down and sit next to my little brother. The dog joins, us and Mattie reaches out for my hand. I try to remember the last time I saw my brother cry and have trouble recalling such an event. I guess I’ve never seen my brother cry. No, not even when we were little and I would lock him out of our playroom or when I would try to flush his Power Ranger action figures down the toilet did he ever shed a tear. We sit on the kitchen floor and I hold my brother in my quivering arms. I hold and hold and hold him.

I’m not going to school today, and I’m having the hardest time explaining even to my closest friends what is going on. There’s no combination of consonants or vowels or syllables, even if pieced together with the finest precision that could fully explain what is running through my head. The next few days go by in a haze, like in one of those movie scenes where the entire world is speeding and racing all around you and the only thing you can do is stand there in silence.

Days go by. Spring fades into summer. “Beach Week” is quickly approaching. I drive Daddy to Emory to meet with his oncologist for his last round of chemotherapy before we head to Wilmington for the week. I sit anxiously in the cold waiting room, wishing I would have brought a sweatshirt. The metal armrests of the waiting room chairs send chills up to my shoulders. With my back to the huge Plexiglas windows, I watch the entire Oncology ward fly past me. Wrinkled old women with faded hair, tired looking men in plaid pants and even a few small children are wheeled past me through the large oak doors. With every step the nurse takes, the patients’ faces seem to droop in sadness, knowing death is coming sooner than expected. 

Back at home, the faces of the oncology ward burn in my memory. I wonder how Daddy can be so strong. I wonder if he really is afraid, but just doesn’t want us to worry, so pretends to be okay. Or maybe he’s just stubborn. Maybe he truly believes that his body can fight this disease. Doesn’t he know that only one percent of patients with pancreatic cancer survive? Doesn’t he know his odds? I get mad at him sometimes. I get mad at God more. 

This idea of death is new to all of us. And for this reason alone, “Beach Week” is hard for me this year. He only comes down to the beach every once in a while. Daddy’s not a real big fan of extremely hot weather, so spending a day sitting in a beach chair with the immense heat rising off the sand, isn’t exactly his cup of tea. But he humors us. Daddy looks thin and small in his bathing suit. His legs are knobby like those of a growing boy. His face is sunburned and weak, but still handsome. His salt and pepper hair, which used to be thick like mine, is fading now; a harsh result of the chemo. 

There are sunsets this summer. When I notice them I’m grateful. But he’s dying. It is likely, but unmentioned, that he won’t be coming back home from the beach this summer, and to everyone but Daddy it’s hard to think of sunsets. It irritates him when we don’t play along. So we do. My Daddy is dying and we’re all trying to pretend that he isn’t; that everything is fine. I cry myself to sleep…a lot.

Its Labor Day weekend and everyone is staying at our house because Daddy is fading fast. We have family members all over the place and it’s hard to go anywhere alone. Our six bedroom colonial, which usually seems quite large, is stuffed full of family. So many people are in town that they have spilled over into the homes of our neighbors. I can’t turn around without running into someone I don’t want to talk to; someone who’s going to ask me how I’m doing and if I ever need to talk, I know who to come to. I don’t want to talk to anyone.

It’s Saturday night. My friend is having her birthday party at the country club, and I am glad to get out of the house. My cousin, Kelly, tags along. When we get home, my grandparents are sitting in my father’s room. Nana is praying the rosary. Pop sits in the chair next to my father’s bed, holding his wife’s hand as she silently asks God to save my father. As I walk into the room, to tell Daddy goodnight, he wakes up. I go over to his bed and kiss him on the forehead.

“I love you,” he says before I go upstairs. We were a really close family and had no problem sharing our affections for one another. And yet again, “I love you.” We always said that to each other, whether I was going to bed at night or going out of town for the week. But I don’t want to love anyone tonight. I’m tired, and I don’t say it back. “I know,” I say instead.

I wake up in the middle of the night. My clock projects a red, blaring 4:57 on the ceiling and my pillow is soaking wet. I’ve heard of people crying themselves to sleep, but I never knew a person could actually cry in their sleep. My iPod is still playing a song from my Summer Sleep Mix. Frank Sinatra’s voice speaks in a faint whisper: “Empty is the sky before the sun wakes up. Empty is the eyes of animals in cages. Empty, the faces of women mourning when everything has been taken from them. Me, don’t ask me about empty.” 

My mother opens the door. The light from the hallway tears through the darkened room. She comes in, kneels by my bedside and reaches for my hand. “You need to come downstairs.” My mother’s voice is calm but it’s obvious that she is tired and has been awake for quite some time. I’m sobbing now and sitting next to Daddy’s hospice bed. His hands are soft and cold. His eyes are closed and his mouth gaps open as if he was in the middle of a snore.

You never know when something is going to occur that will change your very existence. You expect it to arrive with trumpets blaring, some huge ordeal, like a wedding, but instead it comes in the most common of situations. I was sleeping in my bed, dreaming, preparing for the death of one of the greatest men I’ve ever known, and then click. It was silent. Was there a noise? Was he snoring? Was my mother lying in the bed next to him watching the television? Did the alarm go off for him to take his medication? I always thought disaster had a sound. I always thought there was something you would hear; something that would warn you. I always thought that something would tell me to wake up. We were holding our breath until Daddy died, believing that everything would wait. 

11

What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don't. You open your eyes and everything's just like yesterday, only its today. And you don't feel eleven at all. You feel like you're still ten. And you are- underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid, and that's the part of you that's still ten. Or maybe some days you need to sit on your mother's lap because you're scared, and that's the part of you that's still five. And maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to cry like you're three, and that's okay. That's what I tell my  mother when she's sad and needs to cry. Maybe you're feeling three.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like those little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. Thats how being eleven years old is.

You don't feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say "Eleven" when they ask you. And you don't feel smart eleven, not until you're almost twelve. That's just the way it is.

When I think of how I see myself it would have to be at age eleven. I know I'm nineteen on the outside, but inside I'm eleven. I'm the girl in the picture with skinny arms and an ironed skirt and crinkled hair. I didn't like school because all they saw was the outside me. School was lots of rules and sitting with your hands folded and being very quiet all the time. I liked looking out the window and thinking. I liked staring at the girl across the way writing her name over and over again in red ink. I wondered why the boy with the dirty collar in front of me didn't have a mother who took better care of him.

Have you ever had a dream that was so real, 

that when you woke up 

you didn't know what to believe? 

What if you sincerely believed that something was true, 

but you were dead wrong? 

What if you were so stubbornly sure that you were right, 

that you wouldn't even consider the truth? 

Would the truth be 

silenced? 

Or would it try to 

break through?

Winners and Losers

It's unlikely you know the name of Clyde E. Fant. Years ago, he was the Chaplain at Stetson University in DeLand, Fl. Dr. Fant was a friend of my father's. During one of our trips to Florida, my father ran into Dr. Fant at some little restaurant. 

Clyde Fant told us about the president of a bank in a Southern town where he served as Pastor of a congregation. This  man was an outspoken critic of Martin Luther King, Jr. For years prior to King's assassination he would say, "Somebody ought to shoot that S.O.B." When Dr. King was shot, Clyde went to the community leader and asked, "I'm wondering if you had any part in that shooting." Of course, the man was infuriated by the question. Clyde went on to tell him, "No, you didn't pull the trigger, but you and thousands of other good, white Christians kept on saying he ought to be shot until someone finally did."

Riding back to the condo that afternoon, I thought about what Dr. Fant said. They killed King but who won? With racism at least discredited, and the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., now a national holiday, who was the winner, who was the loser?

 Consider Anne Frank and her friends, a little group of Jews huddled together in an attic room,

away from the wailing sirens of the searching Gestapo-- who won? After World War II when the play, The Diary or Anne Frank, was shown in Frankfurt and Stuttgart and Berlin and the curtain rang down, everyone sat in their seats stunned. No one moved. The only thing you could hear were occasional sobs coming from the stricken audience. Who was the winner, who was the loser?

Consider Martin Niemoller, one of the greatest German war heroes of the the first World War, a much-decorated U-Boat commander. After the War he became a preacher and refused to cooperate with Hitler. Finally he was trown into prison because he preached with the Gestapo sitting in his Communion Service and said, "There will be only one sign erected above this altar, and it will be the sign of the cross!" And the Gestapo  took the sign of the cross and broke it and threw him in prison. And yet, who was the winner, who was the loser?

Consider Audrey Grevious. She has worn a criss-cross network of scars on her legs for forty years because she stood her ground in the McCrory's department store, Lexington, KY, while being beaten with chains. But today, this African American woman can eat wherever she wants and vote in every election. Who won? Who lost?

I was always told that it wasn't tasteful to talk about religion publicly, but I can't seem to avoid talking here about Jesus. In the words of Fred Craddock, 

They hammered the nails into the cross with the backs of their Bibles, 

dusted off their hands, and said, ' That'll fix Him!'

Who won? Who lost?