tribute

it's amazing how many things i've learned from my boys, despite the prevailing notion that parents are the teachers.  maybe it's our family trait of obsession around the things we pursue, maybe it's my personal addiction to information...but whatever the cause, i am grateful for the unexpected ways they have expanded my world. 

one of my pet peeves in contemporary vernacular is the expression "humble brag."  aside from the obvious oxymoronic quality, it implies that expressing pride in oneself or another is something that needs a disclaimer.  and it probably goes without saying, but i'll say it anyway, i strongly disagree with that attitude.  

here's where i could let myself go down a tangential path about how the word "brag" is defined with the word "boastful" and how the word "boastful" is defined with the descriptor "excessive" - as in "talk with excessive pride," effectively leaving no word in the english language for speaking with pride about oneself that isn't tinged with negativity.  but i won't. 

so, without further ado, i make no disclaimers for the prideful tribute, a wholehearted brag, that is about to unfold.  

despite having several veterans in my family and social circle, i knew little more about our military's service academies beyond their existence and where they're located.  when luke announced to me, as a rising high school freshman, that he was planning to attend one, i gave them a cursory glance; noticed that the acceptance rate was in the single digits; and bit my tongue.  

well, that's probably not true.  i don't remember exactly what i said, but i'm sure it was something helpful along the lines of, "then you'd better keep that goal in mind from day one and study hard..."  i do know that i was hoping he would expand his goals to include some more reasonable options and walking the fine line between supportive and realistic.  (it's uncanny how sensitive teenagers are to that balance - a hairpin trigger that i inadvertently pulled more than once over the past four years.)  

two years later, after tucking todd into his freshman year at college, i rolled up my sleeves and started my personal service academy 101 education.  while i had some fuzzy idea that the process was complex and lengthy, the magnitude of both were eye-opening.  i liken it to The Amazing Race meets the DMV.  

luke opened his candidate files in his junior year with his application to the academies' summer leadership programs.  he applied to both USMA and USNA's summer programs and was accepted to both.  those applications were the academies' first look at luke's academic, athletic, and extracurricular qualifications and though SLE (the summer program) is more recruiting than culling - the selection is still competitive.     

luke spent the first full week of his 2017 summer break at West Point and his second week at the USNA, flying directly from new york to baltimore.  he then came home for a day before spending another week at Georgia Boys' State, an invitation-only, mock-government program that is looked favorably upon by service academy admissions.  (luke reported that the air conditioned dorms and casual, camp-like atmosphere was a welcome recovery after spending two weeks getting a taste of military life.)  

though the college application process for any high school senior is crammed with essays and deadlines, the service academies take this to a new level.  the application opens in stages to candidates, evaluating at each stage, and passing through only the candidates that meet minimum qualifications.  

there's an extensive questionnaire on activities, course work, accomplishments - similar to what you'd expect for any highly selective school.  these documents all have to be digitally verified by school administrators before they are accepted, preventing candidates from exaggerating accomplishments or activities.  teacher, faculty, and athletic evaluations are required and, unsurprisingly, consist of very specific leadership focused questions.  standardized test scores and preliminary transcripts are required at this stage, as well.  

the next stage of the application includes the essays and a physical fitness test.   the fitness assessment is a hurdle of its own and though the final application deadline runs well into the winter of senior year, the scores must be submitted with congressional nomination applications in early fall. 

oh, i didn't mention that, did i?  in addition to meeting the academy standards, all appointees of our United States military academies must have either a congressional, presidential, or vice presidential nomination. (there are a few other nominating sources, but they are hard to obtain and even harder to use, so i'll spare you...) and, of course, those are competitive too. 

so, at the same time the candidates are completing their multi-staged applications for each academy (no, they don't share applications between the branches...), they are also completing applications for both senators, their district representative, and the vice president - at a minimum.  luke also applied for, and received, nominations from the department of the army/navy for his JROTC participation in an honor unit.  these applications are each individual to the nominating source (yes, each senator and each representative has their own application) and each requires essays, transcripts, evaluations, test scores, and a handful of other unique, random pieces and parts (such as attendance records or fitness test scores.)  each nominating source also has their own timeline for applications, but candidates are all competing for 1 of 10 nominations allowed by each member of congress.  (the VP nominations are allocated differently, but i will spare you those details.)  applicants are invited for committee interviews in the late fall and, at least in georgia, learn of their nomination status in december.  

that's not the whole story about nominations though.. it's really the tip of the iceberg.  every appointee must have a nomination - it's a law or something.  and though the congress-folks can each give ten nominations, they only have one actual appointee slot per year.  (with the exception of the 4th year - because they can technically have 5 appointees at each academy at a time. so, every four years, they get 2 slots.)  so, they nominate 10 candidates to fill 1 slot and the best candidate on that "slate" is offered an appointment, provided they clear all the other qualification hurdles established by the academies. 

but even that doesn't quite cover the nomination process, because some nominating sources designate a "principal nominee"  which means that person gets the appointment over the other nine, as long as they meet the minimums.  so, a slate could have a principal nominee that's technically less qualified, but if they are designated as principal, the academies are legally bound to accept them.  but, let's just set that aside.  most congress-folks submit a "competitive slate" and allow the academy admissions process to identify the most qualified.  

okay, so i've covered the application, essays, evals, CFA (fitness assessment), nomination applications (and associated requirements), standardized tests, and transcripts.  after all of those are processed and the candidate is deemed to be qualified, the academy orders an extensive medical and vision exam, including a careful scrutiny of applicants' medical history.  tragically this is where many candidates are disqualified, as the medical standard for academy admission is much higher than that for the service branches overall.  luckily, luke was not.  

and after all of the boxes have green check marks and the application is complete, the hardest part of the process begins.  the interminable wait.  unlike most colleges and universities, there's no "decision date" to look forward to.  appointments are offered on a rolling basis, with some as early as the fall of senior year for highly qualified and proactive candidates (those are usually offered on the condition of receiving a nomination, as nomination slates aren't due until the January or February of senior year) and some offers of appointment as late as early May.  between November and May, each academy will send out offers of appointment to fill a class of roughly 1200.  

waiting is pretty terrible, no matter what.  but waiting for something that can happen in five minutes, tomorrow, or months down the road is a very particular type of agony.  i think i had a lump in my throat for months.  literally months.

to break down the numbers a bit more... about 15,000 applicants start admission files.  about 5,000 of those receive nominations.  about 2200-3200 are considered fully qualified by the academies.  and about 1200 join the corps with appointments. (obviously more offers are extended..but i don't have that number handy.) 

and just one more point i want to make, as an underscore to the enormous amount of effort it takes to simply apply to an academy: most, if not all, applicants are also completing college applications to a number of back-up schools and competing for national ROTC scholarships (with extensive application processes of their own, including another fitness test and more interviews.)  

it probably goes without saying, but if you think the application process is intense, you wouldn't believe the work that came before it. 

so, if you made it to the bottom of this epic exposition, you likely already know what i'm about to say.  the waiting-lump in my throat disappeared in a blink and has been replaced by a very different throat lump as my luke, my very own, sweet, baby son, is a mere 30 days from joining his fellow class of 2022 cadet candidates at the United States Military Academy at West Point.  and i couldn't be more proud.  

 

d:  unwavering belief in self, as demonstrated by my baby

b:  he gets his obsessive nature from me

g:  the opportunity to proud-brag in a well-deserved tribute

precipice

it's an interesting time in my life.  luke, my baby, leaves home in a mere 52 days.  though todd will be home for the summer, easing the transition, a precipice awaits.  my handy pocket webster's defines precipice concisely as a steep cliff.  perhaps that sounds dramatic to those of you with already empty nests, but i chose the metaphor carefully. 

for the first time in my adult life, i will live alone.  save mega and mouse, i'll be responsible for only my meals, my mess, my whereabouts.  my time will be entirely my own.  what that will feel like or look like, i can only imagine. (and believe me, i do.) 

when i do imagine it, when i allow my mind to place me in this uncharted territory, the emotion that overwhelms me is impossible to capture in a word.  but it is remarkably similar to what i've experienced at the edge of a precipice.  

adrenaline, tinged with fear.  accomplishment, flush with pride.  awe, welling with gratitude.  

and, pause.  a precipice is nothing else if not a pregnant moment of pause.  

as i peer out across the landscape yet to explore, and look back at what i've traversed, my knees are shaky and my heart rises in my chest.  for fear of the edge's danger, i sit down... and in the simple, protective pause, a new emotion surfaces: peace.  

though the uncertainty and mystery remain, though i have only my imagined view of what lies ahead, one clear truth persists.  one of the many truisms my mom conveyed in my young adulthood comes to mind: wherever you go, there you are.  and though at the time, she meant it as a reminder that i couldn't run away from myself, twenty years later it connotes a different meaning.  

no matter who else is there, or isn't, i will be.  iyanla vanzant described it as being with yourself, rather than by yourself in her 1998 bestseller "In the Meantime."  when i read that then, in my mid-twenties, it seemed forced and eye-roll-worthy, but now the concept resonates with me. 

and i find the promise of that to be reassuring and the pregnant pause of the next few months to be a time of deliberate creation.  a portal to my passions, those yet undiscovered and those merely under-pursued.  

d:  crystallized memories of these precious last days with luke

b:  passionate is one of my best qualities

g:  self-entertaining is a close second

greying

after watching a preview for an upcoming woody allen film, i overheard my mom say to a friend, '...well, i know this:  people are more than one thing.'  i hadn't heard the whispered comment she was replying to, but i inferred it was a question of her support for the filmmaker, after her expression of interest in the film. 

must be where i learned it, i thought. 

the continuous public exposure of sexual assaults and perpetrators makes it impossible to escape questions such as this.  where do you place these men in your mental sorting exercise?  are they defined by their public contributions to society or their private?  are they only as "good" as their worst deed?  love the sinner, hate the sin?  present tense over past? 

i've been rewatching the whole of game of thrones with luke.  we've nearly completed the episodes aired to date and just last week watched the battle of the bastards (S6,E9).  arguably the best episode of the series, it was awarded the emmy for both writing and directing and has maintained a fan rating of 9.9 on imdb, the top score of any episode, shared with only three others across all seven seasons. 

in a show that's rich with complex plot and multidimensional characters, this episode stands apart in its simplicity.  it pits good versus evil on a literal and figurative battlefield.  the characters each embody polar opposites of the morality spectrum and viewers need assign no asterisk or caveat to their wholehearted support of the hero. 

but that's a television show.  fiction.  brilliantly and beautifully written fiction.  rarely, if ever, is it so simple in reality.

i recently found myself labeled and judged and discretely filed on the basis of a single value i hold.  a single value.  i can hardly even fathom such a decision myself because i so rarely see anyone in black and white.  (and when i do, i tend to embrace both ends of the spectrum passionately and paradoxically.)  by and large, my world is a million shades of grey. 

i am more than one thing. 

and in my experience, like my mother's, i find that all people are.  we are complicated and multidimensional and imperfect.  we are defined by the unique nuance of our shadows, seen and unseen.  black and white doesn't do justice to anyone. 

but does this greying equate to relative morality?  (i can hear that argument already. see? i can argue both sides of most issues, even with myself.)  no, i contend that it does not.  i suggest instead that we consider greying as a deliberate mindset of acceptance, empathy, and forgiveness.

hold strongly to our personal values and, if we must judge, judge each action of ourselves or another as an individual thread of white or black.  then, most importantly, embrace the fabric of one another, each uniquely textured with individual threads of individual values born of our individual life experiences. 

for i am certain, there is not one among us whose fabric isn't grey. 

d:  a soft greying blanket laid across the country
b:  i embrace the thick, grey fabric of you
g:  greying runs in the family 

why

the hardest question ever asked.  why?

when a child asks, we accept it as curiosity.  but it's the rare adult that can pose a why without evoking at least a suspicion of judgment.  at least that's how it seems to me and, unsurprisingly, i've been wondering why.

when i started writing this blog, i had a different direction in mind for answering the question.  i'd been studying the way people around me posed their why-queries and trying to discern what magic phrasing or intonation or accompanying facial expression was required in order to sidestep suspicion and subsequent defensiveness.  but when i tried my hand at the techniques i observed, my results were mixed.  and so, this blog has had a title and opening line for a week, but that's about it. 

and then, just like when you carefully give a wide berth to the coffee table in the dark living room but bang your knee on the chair instead, i realized i had it all wrong.  looking to the questioner for the answer to the question, both figuratively and literally, made no sense at all.  especially considering the past couple weeks in my life, where i've found myself quite unexpectedly on the receiving end of why questions over and over again about my boudoir photo shoot. 

 a why question with a complex, multi-layered, and nuanced (yes, that's three words for the same thing, i know...#westwing) answer was the perfect medium to examine my internal response.  and rather than evaluating literally how i was asked why, i looked instead at how i heard and felt the question.  and imagine my surprise to learn my ears were affected by a shadow, the shadow cast by insecurity.  a shadow occasionally dark enough to obscure a healthy, natural, inquisitive why.

this likely sounds absolutely insane considering my last blog was about the enormous confidence boost i received from the very same photo shoot.  let me clarify.  the insecurity that crept in at times when confronted with the why wasn't about the actual portraits or my appearance in them.

but rather about what it means about me as a mother (priorities!) and as a professional woman (respectable!).
what it means that i was willing to spend the money on something purely selfish.  (wasteful!)
what it means that i wanted to see myself beautiful.  (vain!)
what it means that i wanted to see myself sexy.  (inappropriate!) 
what it means that i do.

so, while i answered every why question posed with a similar answer, 'to see if i could do it.. to feel beautiful.. to reconnect with myself and my body,' i felt varying levels of insecurity about how the questioner judged my answers. 

and when i came to terms with this as the why under the why, i thought, that's a damn shame.  literally.  it's like the second verse of the same song.  the same song that made me cry when i admitted how many of the pictures i wanted, ashamed of my pride.  this second verse gave air to some societal "mom-shaming" standards i didn't even know i'd bought into, they were so deeply buried.

but no more.  the answer to the question is multi-faceted and layered, as are most people and decisions.  and perhaps that description of the answer is the best answer itself.

why? 
because i am multi-faceted and layered and wish to celebrate them all.

d:  bring on the why's
b:  reframing my self-image
g:  the judgment came only from within

selfie

i think i was around 13 when i first had a desire to know what i looked like.  i remember buying a handheld mirror and studying my face in it.  i looked unfamiliar to myself and i wondered if somehow i had missed an important milestone in my childhood.  i committed my features to memory and promptly lost interest. 

i count myself very fortunate to have been generally absent any unhealthy body image issues as a teen and young woman.  to my mom's credit, i wholeheartedly embraced her wise mantra, 'beauty is on the inside' and was spared the agony so many young women inflict upon themselves, striving for a beauty ideal only obtainable through photoshop and eating disorders. 

perhaps this is the reason that my minds' selfies are all time-stamped.  i have a handful of discrete images in my memory of my appearance.
the first, mentioned above, at 13, handheld mirror, indian style on my bed.
another at 16, likely an attempt to understand what my newfound first love saw in me.
then my next mental selfie isn't until 23, a new mother with baby todd in my arms.  i know exactly what i looked like then.
another time stamp in the year 2000, when i came out at age 26.  i immediately cut my hair short in celebration of my new identity and wanting to look the part.
34 years old: a brush with my mortality had clarified much in my life..suddenly, looking the part wasn't as important as looking like myself.  i let my hair grow out, embraced its newfound curl and my femininity.

and then, at 35, there's a shift in my mental selfie album, from snapshots to a flickering film strip. paradoxically during some of the happiest years of my life, i was my most body self-conscious... perhaps it was the hyper focus on my fitness or perhaps the constant desire to document the joy in my life, or more likely - the combination of the two.  regardless, both came to an abrupt halt when my marriage ended and with that loss, the film strip snapped. 

in the years since, while i've healed in many ways, i've also resigned myself to the loss of my 'glory days.'  and accordingly my mind's selfie camera hadn't bothered to document my appearance, instead creating a self-image from behind my eyes that was essentially adequate and unremarkable.

and all of that is the prologue to what has spurred me to write today.   

amid an internet search for a lifestyle photographer to document myself and the boys, before the imminent empty nest, i stumbled upon a photographer of an entirely different nature and fell in love with her work.  her eye for composition and lighting and the mood her work captured - i felt an immediate connection to her art.  (because there was really no other word for it.)  

i read every word of her website, (including three and a half years of blogs), embracing her bubbly enthusiastic personality juxtaposed with the creative intensity evident in her photography.

but --- meagan was a boudoir photographer.  gulp.  what did it mean that i felt this strong pull to book a session of nearly naked, sexy photos of myself??  i didn't think for a second that i would walk away from the endeavor with photos that looked like the women on her website.  i've already established that i believed my glory days behind me, right? but i emailed anyway, tentatively, asking for a price list and hoping both that i could and couldn't afford the investment.  the latter would make the decision a lot easier, after all. 

her nearly immediate reply began with: "Thanks so much for reaching out!!! I would love love LOVE to get you in the studio for a boudoir session!"  and went on to explain the ins and outs of the process in similar exclamation-point-laden excitement.  i could hardly believe this giddy woman was the same one with what must be serious, technical skills and a mad eye for finding beauty in women.  (spoiler alert: she's one and the same.  imagine tigger, from winnie the pooh, with a creative streak that rivals the greats.)  

i scheduled her first available date - which was six extremely long weeks away - and descended into an obsessive internet vortex of lingerie shopping and boudoir photography study. being the information junkie that i am, i quieted my nerves with an overload of learning.  my research bore out two things in very short order: 
1.  there's a science to this art.  the extreme technicality of the posing, lighting, and shooting gave me some reassurance that little relied on me.
2.  very few photographers in this space have mastered both aspects: science and art.  meagan's portfolio left no doubt i had chosen one of the best. 

as the day approached, my emotions were a curious mix of optimism and skepticism. 

the day of the shoot... well, it rolled out just like i expected.  hair, makeup, posing instructions, lingerie that did nothing to conceal my insecurities... but, as promised, meagan left no oxygen in the room to feed my fear.  her supreme command of every finger, angle, and shadow required my full attention and it was only once i got home, afterwards, that my nerves found their voice in my psyche. 

i'd read blogs from dozens of women touting the confidence boost and empowerment they felt when walking out of their boudoir shoots.  i, on the other hand, feared that i hadn't been able to relax enough or that i wasn't connecting enough in the ways i was supposed to.  i feared that i wouldn't recognize myself in the finished images.  and to make matters worse, my anxiety post-shoot served to amplify my anxiety.  maybe i don't feel the way most women do because i didn't do it right! 

thankfully it was only a week between my shoot and my reveal appointment.  i don't think i could have held my breath much longer than that.  i spent most of the week reviewing all the technical details i'd found in my initial research, reassuring myself that meagan did it right, even if i didn't. 

at the reveal appointment, meagan greeted me with a big hug, gushing about how much she loved my images.  she says that to all the girls, my inner voice chided. 

and then she started the slide show.  'seven minutes, two songs, five seconds on each picture' - she prepped me. 

i didn't hear the first song at all.  i think my brain was receiving maximum input from my eyes instead and struggling to make sense of it all.  that can't be me.  but wait, it is!  

as my shock took a step back, relief sidled up next to it and tried to make space at the table for pride, who had the assignment of rating images with 'one for no', 'three for maybe' or 'five for must have.'  going through the images one by one, i heard myself saying 'five' over and over, and then my voice cracked.  tears filled my eyes.  as it turns out, pride wasn't used to having much of a voice about my appearance... not in a long time.  the realization was startling and cathartic and overwhelming. 

i left my appointment with all the images.  all 57 images, to be exact.  after fearing there wouldn't be enough to make a small album, i floated out on a cloud of disbelief.  it's been three days and i think i've probably looked through them 57 times.  i've shown only very few, to very few.. and yet, the simple knowledge that they exist has fired up that selfie camera in my mind. 

i've come to realize - through this experience - that my selfie snapshots have been triggered by love, most often for or from someone else.  but, for the first time in 30 years perhaps, i am both the giver and receiver of that love.  i am beautiful in my own eyes and that's enough. 

d:  this experience for every woman
b:  57 freaking gorgeous images (57!!!) 
g:  an unexpected awakening

source

-photo by Tommy Vohs

consider the source.  

i've heard that and said it my whole life...the context evolving over time.  but it has come to reside in my consciousness now in a way it never has before.  

consider the source. 

my earliest associations with the phrase were moments of disdain...eventually an endpoint from a statement of exasperation morphed into resignation.   

consider the source. 

when todd brought forensic debate into my life, this became a strategic tenet and opportunity for advantage.  a charge and a tactic.  both a caution and a buttress.  

consider the source.

as i've aged, the mantra has served as a reminder of compassion...empathy.  my mom has long offered the wisdom, 'do the best you can, until you can do better.'  and i extend that sentiment outwards. 

consider the source. 

but now, i turn the scrutiny on myself.  my first-person perspective juxtaposes omniscience with blinders and only one truth is certain.  it's dark in here. 

consider the source.

just as i wouldn't ask a blind man for directions, i wonder if i'm to be trusted with the decisions of my own life.   my disdain looms in the shadows, casting another layer of darkness into the dark.  

consider the source.

last night i was met in this place and a hand extended.  an ear offered.  and the words i heard in reply to my blind stumblings were familiar and gentle.  wisdom passed down and back up again. 

d:  a nightlight

b:  a consideration granted

g:  a listener in the dark

extinction

ivan pavlov is probably rolling over in his grave as he observes the conditioned responses of our modern culture from the afterlife.  (assuming there is such a thing.)  i remember the fun in cleverly assigning custom ring tones to my first iphone.  The Sopranos theme song for all work related contacts.  Batman for luke, because at the time that was his everyday uniform.  gnarls barkley's crazy for that certain friend who fit the bill.  and so on.

i didn't realize the conditioned responses i was ingraining until that gnarls barkley song came on the radio years later and i felt my chest seize with anxiety.  it's been over ten years now and i still feel that twinge when i hear it.  

my phone rings a lot less these days and now i find a chirp or a beep or a bell can change my entire disposition in a split second, as the sounds of communication signal connection and connection evokes emotion and emotion...well, emotion is where it starts and ends for me.  so, hindsight being 20/20 and all, i question the wisdom of linking common sounds with emotion laden relationships because there's no 'silent' setting for the world around me.  

it's funny how a topic will often cross my path many times before it engages me enough to chase, but when someone mentioned neuroplasticity casually in conversation over the weekend and i laid awake trapped in a pavlovian loop to the sounds outside my window, i woke up on a hunt for a related article i skimmed last week.  determined to figure out how to break the link between bell and drool, whistle and wince.  

it was medical student jerzy konorski, a student of pavlov, who first coined the term neural plasticity in 1966 as an early theory about the underlying neural mechanisms driving classical conditioning. the concept that our brains are physically changed by the way in which we use them was a breakthrough theory at the time, but today it's an essential tenet of modern neurobiology.  

we've all heard it.  "what fires together, wires together"   whether behavioral, environmental, or mental, we have the power to change our brains.  norman vincent peale was ahead of his time and his Power of Positive Thinking was largely ridiculed by the medical community; but "brain training" is everywhere you look now.  a quick search on amazon for books with that keyword phrase produced 2,319 titles.  most of them published in the past decade.  

(point of proof:  the google ngram for the phrase as it's appeared in books over the past 50 years.)

note:  this wasn't news to me.  i've been a student of this brain changing, world changing, manifesting reality school of thought for ages...i first learned of it in '05-'06, by a film that came out in 2004, what the bleep do we know, probably right before that graph turns steeply north.  i suspect the uptick was around the time of The Secret, film debut in '06 and book first published in '07.  

but i digress.  what i didn't know.. and what i learned in my reading, is that the rewiring that occurs in our brains, enabled by neuroplasticity, happens primarily while in deep, dreamful, REM sleep.  

dun dun dunnnn.

well, no wonder.  sleep has been elusive over the past several weeks.  the nights are haunted by the periodic call of the tracks nearby and the very sound i strain to hear is the sound i most need to silence...the rumble from within evoked by the rumble from without...and the two holding me just above the escape i need.

d:  restorative rest

b:  visible and vulnerable

g:  extinction via escape