krysti.net

I think it’s an escape.
A mental escape from the stresses of my life, but I know, since I was a little girl, that I live in fantasies.
I blame the Raggedy Ann and Andy movie into making me believe that my dolls came to life.
It, of course, did not help when the Toy Story movies came out and I animated many of Iain and Liam’s toys.
Iain truly believes his G.I. Joe would have his feelings hurt if he doesn’t get stuffed in his chin guards to “see” Iain play in his game.
That’s my fault, to some degree.
I love to believe in the most unbelievable. I don’t know why.
When I read, for example, I’m completely lost in that world and live there for days.
Right now, I’m in Twilight land and wish I had had a vampire boyfriend in high school. Doesn’t everyone?

But the real problem right now, is my insatiable taste for myth.
My kids believe in leprechauns, that you don’t step on mushrooms for fear of destroying a fairy’s home.
They believe of a fairy that leaves you money for your teeth, and a great wizard that leaves you gifts under your tree.
I make my kids a magic giraffe tea that promises them good dreams and make sure they make wishes on dandelions, lightening bugs and stars.
It is fun to live in a fantasy world, but sometimes it can backfire on you.
Like when you know, Christmas will be small this year and you tell your children not to expect too much as they anxiously begin making their lists.

“That’s okay mommy,” Liam said, “Santa can just get us these, he doesn’t need money.”
Back to reality.
But, for some reason, I will never tell my children that magic doesn’t exist.
I don’t know why.
I think there is so much a part of me that wants to believe it does.
A part that truly believes in magic and miracles and not just coincidences or good fortune.
Maybe one day, I’ll find that I was right and stumble upon the end of a rainbow. One thing I do know for sure, it all works out in the end. Somehow, it just falls into place….magically.

The stiffness in my neck wasn’t the only thing that made me realize I was wide awake and not going back to sleep at 3am.
There, in my weary haze, I saw the vision of my very tall and lanky 6 year old son.
He had managed to nestle his way between me and Alex in our queen sized bed.
Queen sized beds are huge if you don’t have kids. Once the family begins, I do recommend a king.

Me:
“Liam, honey, you are much bigger now and coming to sleep with mommy and daddy doesn’t work anymore, we can’t all fit.”

Liam:
“But mommy I had a bad nightmare.”

Me thinking:
is there a good nightmare?
Me:
“Well, what was it about?”

Liam:
“Well, King Kong came and took me and threw me all the way to Goo-Goo’s house and then he came and got me again and played hot potato with me.”

Me:
“Well, that was nice of King Kong to play a game with you, did he say he was sorry for throwing you?”

Liam:
“No, he didn’t and after he played hot potato, he realized he was a big giant human in a King Kong suit and started to stomp across the states and scared people to China.”

Me:
“Wow, he must have been angry!”

Liam:
“Yeah, he was, I don’t want to play hot potato with him anymore, so I thought I would come in here.”

Me:
“Okay, you go sleep on mommy’s side of the bed, I’ll go talk to King Kong.”

Just as soon as I start my coffee.

Every year, since my oldest son, Iain, was 2 years old, we would go to a little cafe called the Whistle Stop for birthdays and special family occasions.
It was a little ‘hole-in-the-wall’ place with great food, nestled in the mountains.
The charm of this restaurant, especially if you have boys, was that it was train themed and actually had model trains running all around the tables.
Last week, I thought it would be fun to take the boys to Whistle Stop for lunch.
When we arrived, not only was it closed, but it was no longer the Whistle Stop.
Pete’s Pizza Place had arrived and as my son ran out of the car and cupped his hands to the glass, he yelled: “The trains are gone too!!!”
It was a quiet drive home, too quiet.
I looked in the rear view mirror and saw tears running down Iain’s cheeks.
“Honey, it’s okay–we’ll find another special place to go.”
He didn’t speak, he just gazed out of the window.
And when we came home, he went up to his bedroom and cried some more.
I never realized how important a simple family tradition was to him.
In his mind, he had lost the Whistle Stop forever, not realizing that what made it special was our family togetherness, something he could have anywhere.
It was revealing to see how sensitive he was and how easily he is broken when things change.
I could not help but think of the cancer.
What will happen to him when I die?
My heart was suddenly heavy and guilty and burdened with the cancer that could change everything for my sensitive child.
I listened to him crying over a restaurant and imagined what he will be like over me, leaving this life forever.
It was one of the most painful moments of my life, listening to his sadness.
I talk to my children about death, more than most mothers, but only because it is my day to day reality.
I tell them not to be afraid of death, it is only part of the cycle of life.
I have talked to them about my cancer and how I’m fighting very hard to beat it.
But seeing Iain cry over change, wanting things to stay the same and stay in tradition, made me realize that he didn’t need to talk about death, he needed to talk about how death could change his life.
“Iain, honey”,rubbing his back, “Life is about change (death), if you get upset about those changes, you will have a hard time. You need to embrace the changes in your life (mommy dying) and know that it’s okay, life goes on, and you will learn that change is a good thing because you will find and discover new things in your life (college, love, children). Pete’s Pizza Place (life without mommy) is probably a really cool place and I bet Pete would love for us to come to his restaurant for our birthdays (life will be okay without me). You’ll see, it’s okay to be sad about the Whistle Stop (mommy dying), it’s okay to be sad about the changes (death) sometimes, but you will find that the sadness goes away,
you’ll see…..
you’ll see…..”

Another conversation in the backseat of my car:

Liam:
“Hey mommy, did you know that in 100 years, I’m going to be a teenager and you’ll be an old lady!”

Iain:
“Hey Liam, you know that there are teenagers who don’t know how to swim?”

Liam:
“Huh? I even know how to swim!”

Iain:
“Yeah, last year, there was an adult that drowned at the lake!”

Liam:
“A Dot?”

Iain:
“No!, an adult!”

Iain:
“Hey mommy, I’m getting into ‘Mad Scientry’! I’m going to go bald and just have white hair in the back that sticks up and wear crazy glasses and a lab coat.”

Me thinking:
and this has to do with drowning dots?

Me:
“So that is what you want to be when you grow up?”

Iain:
“Yeah, I’m going to be a Mad Scientist!”

Liam:
“I’m going to be a worker, maybe a spaceman, but I want to fly without anything.”

What aspirations! Where’s my coffee?!

I am on a journey of living the life I have always dreamed!!!

I guess you could say it’s my ‘bucket list’.

I’m only 36, but I do have cancer and qualify for all of the things the government gives old people, so….yeah….I have a ‘bucket list’!

I am ‘RE’…I love that little prefix…’RE’-inventing my life.

Like a new birth, I have been ’spanked’ to awareness.

All around me, are other human beings going through hell and then making changes in their life for the better.

I would like to talk about these people I notice.

Some are personal friends and some are celebrities.

Today, I will talk about my “If I were a lesbian” crush, Rihanna.

Here’s a woman, in the spotlight everyday, dating an ass, who was also in the spotlight everyday.

News of domestic abuse from said ‘ass’,  whose name I refuse to mention, surfaces all over the tabloids and entertainment channels.

Now, 3 or 4 years ago, if that had been me, I would have been sucking my thumb in fetal position for 6 months.  I would have been ashamed, embarrassed, worried of what others might think.

But now, I will take a lesson from Rihanna,  who has re-invented her life since that dreadful day.

Rihanna did not hide under a rock.

She made sure justice was served, and then she held her chin high and rolled on with her life.

I am inspired by her courage, her strength, her awesomeness, her ability to kick some ‘ass’ with her music.

I hope you are too!

Click here to watch Rihanna kick ass!

If you know me,  you know I’m not a morning person.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that is the reason I homeschool, so I don’t have to wake at the crack of dawn to get my kids fed, dressed and on a bus!

But I will tell you, that for Yoga, I was up at 6 am!

I woke up before anyone else in my family, even Iain.

It felt great to be awake and ready to go with my day and I’m thinking that I need to wake up this early every day.

I’m ashamed to say, however, that morning flatulence runs in my family.

I remember hearing my mom set off her own bombs while I was getting ready for school.  I used to think:  “My God that woman farts like a dinosaur!”  And here I am now, THAT WOMAN!

Believe me, the second I put my feet on the floor, the rumbling begins!

I cannot tell you how hard I try to be modest and classy, but I can only thank God that Alex ignores it now.

Hey, love me, love my gas.  Marriage can get too comfortable sometimes!

So I’m sitting in Yoga this morning and everything’s melting.

I mean, I’m visualizing my muscles melting into the floor and I’m trying hard to breathe and to really look like I know what I’m doing.

While in ‘child-like’ pose, my belly draping between my knees, I just knew I was going to blow!

So instead of visualizing relaxation and meditating on ‘positive’ energy, I’m tightening every muscle in my body and thinking about the ’stinky’ energy ready to be released.

‘Come on Krysti, keep it together’, I’m silently praying.

Talk about stress!  It’s bad enough that I’m trying to release the stress in my life and now I’m replacing it with the fear that I’m going to fart so loud that while everyone is doing the ‘praying mantis’, I’ll be knocking them off balance!

My friend has re-assured me today that everyone gets the urge to fart in Yoga.  It just takes one fart to open that channel for everyone else.

Well, maybe I’ll be that one person.

I’ll keep you posted!

Namaste!

Walking to the car one sunny afternoon, the kids and I spotted a very dead and squished squirrel on the road.  After closer inspection, of course, this is the conversation that followed:

Liam:

“Flies eat poop and they’re eating that dead squirrel.”

Iain:

“Yeah, who would want to eat a dead thing?”

Liam:

“Who would want to eat poop?!”

Iain:

“Well, some people kill animals and then they save the bodies.”

Liam:

“oooooooo gross!”

Iain:

“Yeah, they clean out all their guts and stuff.”

Liam:

“Like their brain and stuff?”

Iain:

“Yeah, they throw it out.”

Liam:

“oh, they throw it out the window?”

Iain:

“No, in a trash can.”

Liam:

“Gross!  Who would want a brain in their trash can?!”

Because I get a second chance at life, I choose to do things differently.  Have you ever thought about what you would change in your life if you could go back in time?  I do often.  I look back and wish I had lived the life I’m trying to live now.

Here are some things I would have done instead:

1)

Okay, I have to leave that blank, and I’ll tell you why.

It is the past in my life, the stupid things I might have said or might have done that made me who I am today.

I cannot look back any longer.  I cannot be nostalgic of a past of which I am not always proud.

I would not be able to re-invent my life and be on this exciting  journey if I did not have those mistakes from which to learn.

So, in this moment, I will tell you what I am doing now.

I am learning to play Bass guitar.  I am going to poetry readings. I am publishing an art/literary magazine for children. I am learning Yoga, and I am proud that my 8 year old has called me the Yoga Diva!

That’s me!

I can remember, as a little girl, seeing the rays of the sun through the clouds.  I thought it was God.

My only exposure to church, as a child, was my grandmother.  She took me to a Baptist Sunday school once.  The teacher told all of us (8 year olds) that there was no Santa, no Easter Bunny and if babies die, they go to hell because they haven’t accepted Jesus into their hearts.

I told Mammaw what the scary man said and she never took me there again.

Fast forward my life 8 years, the hormones were raging and there were very cute guys in my friend’s church youth group.  I found Jesus that year….I think, or maybe just a crush?

I started to believe what the church taught me.  I started to read a list of Do’s and Don’ts.  I began to seperate good versus bad.  That guy is bad because he’s homosexual.  That guy is good because he is not.

I lost myself in religion.

And when bad things began to happen, someone told me I didn’t have enough faith.  Someone else told me that we don’t know why there’s bad in this world.  And someone else told me to wait until heaven for things to get good again.

My mom became “saved” when I was in high school.  She loved to go to church.  She was so excited about teaching Sunday school and reading the many versions of the bible.

She had her highlighters and her bible bag and then one day she came home crying.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”  I asked.

“Pastor Jon talked about how we should always be in prayer.  I don’t understand how I can be talking to God all the time when I have to work and do other things.  He made me feel like I was a bad christian.”

My mom would have loved to have been a pastor, or a pastor’s wife, spending all day in prayer.  She got sick, very quickly after that.  She needed a heart transplant and died waiting.

“She must have lost her faith in God’s healing powers,” a neighbor explained.

My dad, my brother and I knew they were wrong.

And when I got cancer, the “healing powers of God” played like a broken record in my life.

“God healed you Krysti!”  a friend said.

That’s great–I guess, so why me and not my mom?  Why me and not the children in Africa?  Why me and not all of the other people who die every day from something?

Is God this great puppeteer?  Are we supposed to pray that he pulls our strings?

I just can’t believe that.  I do believe, that my cancer was a gift.  And if I am healed, it is a healing from a feeling of entitlement. Who am I to believe in God and expect all of these miraculous, magical blessings?  Who am I to believe that if someone doesn’t believe in God, they are destined for death.

I am  thankful for something to believe in.  I believe in a power greater than anything in this universe.  A power that is not selective in people’s answered prayers, a power that does not see good or bad, but demonstrates a universal and unconditional love.

I believe in a cycle of life that includes a death of which I am no longer afraid.

May the lessons of this cycle inspire future generations.

I am at peace with my faith, with my convictions, with my prayers.

I am “healed”.  I am whole.