Givin' thanks 'n gettin' soul...

I was a junior in college, and it was the year I got me some foot tappin' soul.

Really, it was the year I learned more about givin' thanks for the simple things.

The first time I attended, I could hear the singing from my car when I turned off the ignition and sat a minute just to have a listen. 'You are so white girl in a skirt with blonde hair in the heart of a ghetto, Kim. I sure hope you don't hear gunfire,' I thought. But naturally, the thought didn't deter me. I had heard about this place on Martin Luther King Boulevard, and frankly, I needed more soul regardless of whether or not there was a chance of hearing gunfire on my way into the place. And I felt I needed to go someplace 'outside the box' to get that soul. So I got out of my car, smoothed out my Sunday best, corrected my posture and made my way to the doors in search of it. I admit, I was a little nervous. I swallowed (a quirk when I'm nervous), then I opened the door.

The first thing I noticed in that very small and stuffy church was the sea of red – red carpet and pews that sported red fabric over the parts that were cushion and even some red carpeting on some of the walls. An amiable black gentleman immediately handed me a church bulletin, shook my hand and said with a wide grin, 'Welcome to Mt. Olivet. I can find you a seat if you like ma'am.' He pointed to an open spot - the only open spot – next to an older, darling black woman with a blue suit, blue shoes and a blue hat featuring a blue beaded feather ensemble that resembled a bird of some sort.

Of course, I couldn't help but notice the music again. That heavenly sound of that music – the organ, the piano, that choir, the tapping of feet in the aisles and the swaying of bodies in the pews to the rhythm of the music. And that sweet woman next to me, singing with the others, 'If it had not been for the Lord on my side then tell me, where would I be? Where would I be?...' and pausing to take my hand and say, 'Come on in, precious.' I took her smooth, wrinkled hand, and I held on to it for the duration of the singing.

I also couldn't help but notice how sharply everyone was dressed. Really, these parishioners had pulled out their Sunday best, it was clear to see. From hats of every color to ties of every color to suits of yellow to white loafers with blue stripes down the front. I can remember glancing over at a woman dressed from head to toe in yellow, including yellow tights and a yellow hat and thinking, 'Now that's some soul, sister...' but a 'Mmmmm hmmmmm. I know that's right,' from the older woman sitting next to me interrupted my thought. A 13 year old was behind the microphone now. He was about to quote whole chapters of the book of Isaiah he had memorized.

We sang some old hymns, including Precious Lord Take My Hand where I tapped my foot to the rhythm of the organ, closed my eyes and sang the lyrics at the top of my lungs (I LOVE THAT SONG!), and we settled in for the pastor's sermon. What I remember from that first day at Mt. Olivet is how thankful and humble the pastor and his flock seemed to be during and after the service. Throughout his sermon, the pastor depicted various hard life situations that several of his parishioners had recently experienced (some absolutely horrendous such as being rescued from living a life as a prostitute or as a drug addict), yet these same people still put on their Sunday best and had something to smile about. These same people embraced me (white skin and all) with a kiss on the cheek after the service and asked me over for lunch, to which I regretfully declined. The pastor also stated that no matter what life presented, we could all be thankful for one thing, the most important thing: 'That the Lord woke us up this morning. And I know that's right...'

Several times my junior year, I would slip away from campus and my duties as a resident assistant to a very early morning service at Mt. Olivet – an experience that continued to awaken my senses to a whole new level I think.

But the experience also stirred me down deep in my soul – not only because I usually found myself tappin' my foot along to the rhythm of that music that often made me cry, but also, I learned so much about thankfulness from some of the people in that congregation. Mostly, many of those parishioners taught me by their life example. As I got to know a few of them outside of church, I witnessed them be thankful for the smallest things that I took and still take for granted every single day, such as having more than one Sunday best outfit hanging in my closet – hat and all.

So this Thanksgiving, I'm purposefully reminding myself of those wonderful folks at Mt. Olivet and the many simple things I can be thankful for. And similar to what the pastor said, no matter what life situations we find ourselves in this Thanksgiving, we can all be thankful for one thing – the most important thing: That we get the chance at another day.

Happy Thanksgiving.

It was all a sneaky trick...

It was all a subterfuge – a sneaky trick, you see. It was similar to my biting into a piece of 'pina colada' licorice recently only to find that the piece of licorice, though 'highly acclaimed' as 'tasting exactly like a bona fide pina colada,' (according to the package) tasted nothing of the sort. I felt shorted.

I could go off onto a treatise about pina coladas, and how I once drank so many that I managed to gain five pounds on a three-day family cruise, but I will save my 'pina colada zeal' to rant about in another column perhaps. Perhaps.

So it was a subterfuge – hook, line and sinker. Put me in a skirt, and call me a lady – or at least I'll appear as a lady on the outside, right? Sure.

And for my first year at college, my throwing on a skirt or a dress (to the middle of my knee or below no less), was nothing other than a subterfuge. It was all a sneaky trick to please my superiors. You can take the girl out of Montana, but come on now, you can't take the Montana out of the girl. I wanted to be in jeans! And don't get me wrong, we are ladylike enough in Montana, but where I went to college was a different land (exceptions apply of course) – a world of many batting eyelashes and lots of makeup and Petunia Red lipstick, skirts, dresses, scarfs, perfect posture and for crying out loud, a lady would never dare say 'You are a real kick in the pants!' Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to part of the unofficial term for an area of the United States called the Bible Belt. Welcome to Chattanooga, Tennessee.

My freshman roommate, bless her soul for putting up with me, was from New York. Now, I've met some folks from New York, and from what I can tell, most tend to be a little like folks from eastern Montana in the way that they are pretty candid and have that 'what you see is what you get' mentality. She, too, really wanted to wear jeans instead of a skirt, and I came to adore her, but she had already attended Tennessee Temple University for a year. I had not. She had learned more about 'being a lady.' I had not, you see. And so it happened: I put on a dress (this whole dress/skirt thing was a TTU rule on campus) and she and I ventured to the TTU cafeteria my first Sunday after church.

Now, I could also go into a treatise about southern food, but I won't. However, I will say that it never ceased to amaze me that down south, they find a way to fry almost everything.

She and I were standing in one of the buffet lines in the cafeteria, and as I came to find out, many southern ladies were even well-mannered at the buffet line. How annoying.

But I patiently waited. And after several minutes of growing irritated over watching lady after lady take her sweet, precious time to perfectly place exactly a quarter of a cup of corn at the left of her plate (apparently the left of the plate is where corn keeps its manners), I bellowed out in jest, 'OK gals, you are all sucking hind tit! Let's get going. Move the line along.' And I smiled. I was trying to make a joke.
But you could have heard a pin drop in that crowded cafeteria (surprise, surprise). My roommate looked at me and asked in a whisper, 'What did you just say?' So I said it again, and loudly. And she offered with that 'you had better knock it off right now' look in her eye, 'Hey, we'll talk about that later.' And I got it. I may have walked like I was hiking through the Georgia cotton fields when I was in a dress on campus at first, but I knew that look. I was no dummy, no 'mam.

And I 'got' a lot more during my three and a half years spent at TTU after I put down my pride and was willing to learn some new things from those southern women (some ended up becoming some very good friends to me).

I did learn about being a lady and having manners (I hope so), I learned some about submitting to rules I didn't necessarily feel were important or relevant, I learned that Petunia Red lipstick is not only my color but should not be an everyday look for me necessarily, and I learned some about southern culture and good eatin,' too. I also learned a great deal about mullets (more so from choice men). But most importantly, I learned that no matter how ladylike I act or I appear on the outside (which is appropriate for certain occasions, of course), a 'real' lady cannot be conjured or produced or put on. A real lady builds her life on substance, not merely on image. Whoopa!

So as I occasionally tune into today's television or peek at magazines while I'm getting ready to check out at the grocery store, I am reminded again about this important truth I learned in college. The images of what ladies are supposed to aspire to be, act like and look like according to TV or to those magazines are simply a subterfuge in and of themselves – a sneaky trick, if you will, used to make a sell. In similar fashion, just as I should not have bought into the notion that the pina colada licorice would REALLY taste like a pina colada (come on, Kim), maybe I'd be better off not buying into Hollywood's image of what it means to be a lady. If I choose to, I will no doubt, feel shorted.

The beauty about love

Junior high years tend to be an awkward time of life. But for me, junior high years proved to be doubly so.

Junior high held all kinds of strange phases for me – from clothes like my green lace dress I wore at least once a week to sporting my hideous Mona Lisa tie I purchased at a Billings resale shop (shock) to my obsession over journaling every move of every day to my singing endlessly into the evening as soon as I walked through my home doors to begin studying exactly at 4:00 p.m. (ask my sisters). Believe me, I was awkward times ten.

I know I was 'that' girl in class who drove my peers crazy by belaboring every point of every lesson to be learned from every quote of the week discussion in junior high health class. I assume my peers thought, 'Could someone put a cork in Kim's mouth? Holy Cow.'

But since grade school, I had grown so used to being the 'odd ball' or called 'Dumbo' or labeled 'fatty,' that I had begun to numb myself towards feeling approved by my peers. And out of my own insecurity, I got pretty good at defense mechanisms, which included waxing eloquent about random health class quotes as I got older – particularly in junior high. Early on, I figured if I wasn't ever gonna cut it as a 'pretty or popular girl,' I better cut it as 'good grade goody girl' not to mention 'individual girl' – especially if I was ever going to see that bright, big world beyond Glendive.

Once, when I came home crying in junior high because 'Mom, I just can't understand why everyone thinks I'm so weird. I'm a nice person. Can't they see beyond the black?' (I also went through a phase of wearing mostly black along with a strange black hat and a braided hair extension I had acquired along the way. Don't ask.)

Mom, who was really not much of a talker, quietly offered, 'All you can be is you, Kimmer. You can't spend your whole life worrying about what people think. Consider the source. You also don't have to wear black EVERY day or button your shirt all the way up to your chin.' I remember rolling my eyes at Mom's last suggestion. Because yet another phase of mine was ensuring each morning, during my last glance in the mirror, that I was dressed appropriately and accordingly (at least in my opinion). Basically, I ensured I was dressed more conservatively than a schoolmarm – with the last shirt button not falling too far below my chin.

Of course my peers snickered (come on, I almost asked for it). My mother HAD to love me through every awkward stage and phase and craze. My peers did not.

And so this column is dedicated to my mother, who I lost almost one year ago to date. My mother's love was just that: Love. It was unconditional. It was patient. It was tolerant. It was sacrificial. It was serving. It was accepting. It was selfless. Mom's love saw me through those awkward junior high years, and she never once asked me to stop wearing my green lace dress or that hideous Mona Lisa tie. She never asked me to stop journaling obsessively. She never asked me to stop waxing eloquent about a new quote I learned at school, though inwardly (just because she was not the talking type) she must have occasionally rolled her eyes at my blether-blathering. She never asked me to stop wearing all black or to take off my black hat (now that is love). And Mom never asked me to stop singing either. (In fact, before she died, Mom told me she wished I would sing more, so occasionally, I'd get out the guitar and sing to her if I felt she was well enough to endure it).

Though sometimes I still miss my mom so much it absolutely takes my breath away, I am reminded that the beauty about love – especially Mom's kind of love – is that its presence still lingers. It always will. In fact, because I don't take Mom’s love for granted anymore, I think its presence is even stronger in my life now. Just as Mom's love saw me through those terribly awkward junior high years, it will see me through all of life’s awkward times. And just as a paraphrased Sophocles quote 'spoke' to me once in junior high, the quote couldn't be more appropriate for now: Love frees us of all the weight and pain of life – and Mom's love doubly so.

Road trip, Tiger and Mullets

So this is a rewritten version of a post I posted quite some time ago. It's still quite appropriate :) I should write about the election, and in time, I shall, but this is more my groove as of late.

Sometimes a girl’s just gotta stare down that white line.

Road trips are something I crave like PG Tips tea on a crisp, fall day – with a little milk and honey. A road trip means anything I want it to be. It means ‘getting out of Dodge.’ It means throwing in a diversion to the more mundane day-in and day-out necessities that make up this so-called life. It means turning up the music and letting my hair down. It means talking to myself for hours if I feel like it (after all, I am my own best listener). It means sitting in quiet. It means listening to a Harvard lecture economics course via CD. It means thinking time. It means writing music in my head time. And maybe most important, staring down that white line on a road trip means I get to be as weird as I want to be for several consecutive hours. Delight!

Because chances are, I’m never going to see the person(s) passing me on my left again. Of course, in eastern Montana, the person passing me on the highway could be my next door neighbor or a childhood friend who I forgot to send a Christmas card to last year. Even so, because the number of cars on I-94 is fairly scarce, I can usually spot a car long before it passes, thus giving me adequate time to tone it down a notch so as not to put anyone that knows who I am into total shock or disgust. But again, since the number of cars on I-94 is scarce, when driving in eastern Montana, I get hours of delightful highway play time. And once I hit North or South Dakota or Wyoming, whichever way I’m headed, I have free reign to dream up anything possible to make people passing me go, ‘Uh, weirdo, three o’clock!’ Indeed.

One of my favorite road trip antics is actually a simpler version of a yoga move I learned a few years ago called ‘Tiger.’ I only wish I would have known this move on my road trip from Glendive to Tennessee a few years ago. The move is not what you may think, however.

I was taking private yoga lessons in Denver when I learned the move. My yoga instructor told me this move would help me especially, mainly because I am a ‘Type A personality, Dear’ and was holding my stress in my upper neck and jaw.

Anyway, the full move involves two separate but consecutive moves – both having several different actions. The first move involves sitting on one’s knees and inhaling through the nose while closing the eyes and tightening one’s fists into tight balls. The second move involves stretching one’s jaw muscles by opening the mouth as wide as possible and then punch-forcing with the diaphragm all air out of the open mouth while at the same time loosening the fists into an upward, open-palm position. The sound of the air being punched out is similar to a breathy ‘Paaaaaaawwwwhhhhh.’ Kind of weird, but let me tell you, the move is addictive once learned correctly. It truly helps loosen tension in the jaw and neck area. Or maybe the move is only addictive for me, since I like doing some things for shock value and enjoy when people passing on the highway give me the look of ‘You are weird, little lady’ when I do a simpler version of Tiger with my mouth open as wide as it will go and punch-force air out of it. Why yes, yes I am weird.
And yes, road trips, how lovely ...

Minus a warning ticket from a Wyoming Highway Patrol Officer last week for going 6 miles over the speed limit, I must say, the road trip was precisely what the doctor ordered. ‘I promise to slow it down officer.’ And I did, though I questioned if the only thing there to hit while staring down the white line was perhaps some lost cattle. Interesting.
However, as I got closer to Colorado, I just could not hold Tiger pose long enough for all the cars passing by to witness. Shame. And so I turned on the economics course and learned some about micro versus macro. Also interesting.

So having come back refreshed and recharged (that is supposed to be the point of vacation, right?), I fully recommend to any reader who finds my column worth reading (bless you, bless you) a road trip with lots of Tiger and some mullet spotting. Because taking an afternoon to spot mullets is also something I crave, and road trips usually lead to an afternoon spent shopping in a mall. And malls are great places to spot mullets, especially down South.

Halloween 2008

Halloween pics of some of my nieces and nephews. They are so darn cute!!!

Road Trip take two

Here's the other picture set from the road trip. I got to see Nikki and family as well as Chad (I personally like the picture of Chad trying to look all smart and stuff while driving...and I kept getting us lost...shock!!). I would have taken more pics but forgot to take my camera and didn't it have it charged the first night of fun. I'm a mess :) The picture of my huge foot depicts the tatoo I never posted. With the anniversary of Momma's death creeping up, I figured the post was appropriate. I got the tatoo for her. It has very special meaning to me.

Road Trip

I took a road trip to Denver then flew to Kansas to see Addie, a childhood friend. These are some pictures of Addie, her lover Edward who is an economics genius (PS, I picked his brain for almost two hours..I'm sure he's sick to death of me :), and me. The dinner table I had to take a picture of 'cuz Addie always has the BEST tablecloths and kickin' napkins. I love dinners with Addie. The picture turned the wrong way (yes, I'm an idiot) would be Addie and me at a litte hole in the wall art studio. Addie LOVES art. It's tradition for us to seek out art anytime I see her!
Had a ball! Love her like mad :)