Can We Really Learn From a Script?

We all have done it, sat up and screamed “Exactly” at the movie or television screen when the script writer has given the perfect answer to the actor or actress and they have displayed in such a way that it is obvious that no one would be able to miss it. However, is it that obvious? Can we all get that subtle hint that is being nudged in our general direction? Can we really learn love from a script? Men, I have noticed, are so uneager to attend the proverbial “chic flick” for one reason and one reason only-FEAR. Fear that they are going to be scrutinized every minute that the female that they with are will be analyzing every thing they have done up until that point and may decide that they need to move to greener and plusher pastures. However, what the men do not realize is that the girls are on that same date thinking “What haven’t I done to make him want to be like that with me”. So you see, the “chic flick” is not just torture for the male species but for the female mind as well. We go to these movies or watch these television shows because we want to know that true love is out there, that in some form love is real, tangible, and in bloom. We want to think that the unimaginable is actually plausible. That someday that one person who didn’t think that “happy” was attainable can look in the mirror and see that happy was just around the corner that whole time waiting. Script writers bring out emotions deep inside that we try to say are not really there, that we say we do not feel for the fear of hurt and sorrow. We have become afraid of love and affection, afraid of the need of human contact. We allow ourselves to become involved in the movies and in the television because we know its not forever. We can relate to that shortness of time and inevitability that it will leave someday. We cannot equate that in real life trials and tribulations. We cannot establish in our hearts that level of readiness for the end in love, so we form walls and build hard shells in hopes to keep those feelings from getting all the way through. Maybe some day we will learn to “Hear” and “Learn” from the script writers. Maybe we can actually live a page or two from our beloved movies and hopefully maybe just maybe, we can find that true love isn’t just $8.50 and the phrase “Pass the popcorn”.

Things Change When You Become A Mom-At 19

It was a hard choice, the choice I made to become a teenage mother at the age of 19. I did not go looking to do this, it just happened. It was not a wish that was granted by my fairy Godmother, for I would have asked for the body of a Victoria Secret model and the money of Donald Trump. No, this was a decision that was made by shear nerve and perseverance, to know that I was making the ultimate sacrifice for something that I truly believed in. I knew that deep in my heart that I was meant to be a mother, I just wasn’t prepared for it to have happened so early on in life. However, I took it in stride. I gave birth to a healthy, beautiful baby boy. I named him after a wonderful friend and a charismatic little charmer of a boy in my class at the school where I was a teacher aide at the time. It was not easy, not by any means. I struggled; I struggled to maintain a life of my own and the life of a mother. To some, it was if I had died. They thought because I could not go out, I had be given a death sentence. They had no idea the joy that came with being able to hold and soothe a small, helpless life that solely depended on you. There were others that viewed from a distance looking down through their lashes at what they thought was sin, a young girl out of wed-lock with a young baby with no father. The only sin was the thoughts they were having of my child and me. I held my head high through the hard times and through the good. It is a lonely place to be when you have had a child at such a young age, no one really understands unless you have been there. Unless you have given up your entire existence to give life to another, you cannot even fathom the loneliness that comes every night when you close your eyes. To have not experienced life as others have is a tremendous burden to bear. To which I must say I would not trade that burden for one moment if it meant I would not have my son, for he is my soul. No matter how hard my day with him as been, he is my life at the end of it. My children are the air I breathe each and every day. Learning to grow with my children as been a journey I will never forget as I hope they will remember how their mom gave her all to them as they grow to be men. I hope they can take that love to their families and learn from their moms’ mistakes and remember that it is not what you have or who you know, but how you love that matters.

A New Road.

" We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal." Is this not what the doctrine of our great nation proclaim? Is that not what we fight for every day in and out of this land to preserve so fervently? Everywhere we turn these days we see the abuse of the political front on each and every corner of rural and city America. When did our choices become governed by the States and by the Democracy? When did we lose our right to choose whom we love, how we conceive, and how we heal? When did we lose our rights as people of this great land? It did not happen with Bush, it did not happen with Clinton, however unyielding in their strides to try,it was not them. It was us, We the people. We the people gave up our freedoms by forgetting to vote on election day or saying we were to tired to care. We the people throw away our choice when we choose to let the voices come from single minded individuals who are only out there to bolster a race, religion, or single cause. We the people need to stand firm for one common cause-We the People. It is us that is suffering and with no hand to pull us up from the brink. We the people are caught in the cross-fire of a blood shed of power and greed. No more is this great Democracy about strength, pride, and civil liberties. It is now about money, power, and the hold of the globe in it's entirety. So many want it, so few attain it. It is so much stronger today than it was in years past. We are watching the first woman and African-American run for the Presidency. Never were there higher stakes than these, than watching to see if this country proceeds on making history or making choices. We the people have to start realizing that if we do not start thinking and making "Choices" we will lose this great nation to a game that has been long played but never with such costly stakes. We must demand that our country be returned to us before we lose her. We must demand that she is brought to some resemblance of her former self. We must stop the bickering amongst ourselves day in and day out about war, research, and the line between red and blue. This is a line between America and the death of a nation. Are we willing to lose that war?

Does Cinderella Really Get Her Slipper Back?

We all read the story, the young girl who is ill-fated by the untimely death of her father to be trapped into a life of despair with her wretched step-mother and two foul-tempered step-sisters. We speak of Cinderella, the poor servant girl who is transformed by her fairy-Godmother into a ravishingly beautiful maiden then swept off to the ball to find the prince and rescued from her prison home. Is she really? The story doesn’t go any further than the Prince marries Cinderella and takes her away in the carriage? No one goes into the trials and tribulations of a relationship or marriage with a young girl or even a young man for that matter. Maybe if someone would have sat down with more of us when we were younger, we would have been better prepared to handle the situations that were faced as married couples or involved couples. For we all have some pre-conceived notion that we should have some Cinderella moment that someone should come rescue us, when in fact, we should rescue ourselves.
Recently I was watching the movie “Parenthood” with Steve Martin. I have never had relationships described in such a way as in this particular scene in this movie. The grandmother, whom wise beyond her years, is being escorted out to the car to go see one of Steve Martin’s characters’ children’s school play. She over hears the heated discussion between Martin and Mary Steenburgen’s characters on their relationship and their pregnancy. The grandmother starts to describe a roller coaster ride that her late husband had taken her on long ago; how the ride had twists and turns. That it jostled her up and down, that she was frightened and full of joy all at the same time. She mentioned that some people had opted to just go on the Merry-Go-Round, however that just went around and around in circles not giving any excitement or adventure to anything. Grandma had said that she preferred the roller coaster; she enjoyed the unexpected and excited rather than the dull and uneventful. The writer of that script had been very insightful day that day. Relationships really rather are like roller coasters and merry-go-rounds. You can either live them with excitement or live them with rigid structure and no surprises. It all rather depends on the form in which you tend to live your life. In relationships, we all cater to the notion that somewhere is that person who is going to steal our breath away. It is the life that has been built around that preverbal Hollywood dream. That romantic vision that has been embedded in our thoughts as young girls as we drifted off to sleep. The visions of Knights in armor on their noble steeds wielding their swords to vanquish the horrid queen that held us captive in the tower above. Can we really believe the notion that real, true love exists? Or is real, true love not what we find but what we make? I think that somewhere someone forgot to mention that it is up to us to fill in the blanks to make sure that Cinderella gets her slipper back, that happy ever after was attainable, just hard to reach. It is never easy to question one’s true intentions when in a relationships, however I feel that could be what’s missing in the puzzle we call life and romance. We are not allowing us to actually look deep inside ourselves to find what we truly need for fear of what we might find. We should not be afraid of who we truly are, for each of us are unique and special in a way that someone out there is going to find irresistibly charming and seductive. It is up to us to find out if Cinderella really does get her slipper back.

Finding Happy.

There is a line in a song from the movie "Footloose" that phrases “Where have all the good men gone and where are all the Gods?". There could be no truer statement utter in any language to date. I do not utter those words to be a cynic, as the wife of a new found friend has pointed out that I am. I say those words in response to a growing custom of men, and women I must add, that are so perplexed by the way society is that they are no longer optimistic about anything in life, including the opposite sex. I must admit, I am included in that portion of the people who have given up waiting for the knight in shining armor or the maiden to let down her hair. I feel that long gone are the days of our grandparents where true love was not just something that was talked about but actually happened. Men loved their wives passionately and without fail and women needed their men in their lives not because it was expected but because it was their honor and their privilege. I can say that I do not feel jaded in thinking that my children will never see this for my parents are the epitome of the cliché of the happy couple. My father is so deeply devoted and in love with my mother that there is no hope of recovery. I can only hope that my two darling boys take it all in and see that it is how you really love a woman. Totally and hopelessly without holding back, regardless of what the future might hold.
In our day and age, I feel we have forgotten the ways of Bogart and Hepburn. I think we have misplaced that romantic notion somewhere. So many of us have built walls that are unbreakable that we have forgotten how to take them down when someone wants to be let in. A friend of mine views this as a fine line between possible or probable. How have we gotten this far gone in the world of romance or just in life? We need to find ourselves again amongst the ruins of relationships past, present, and future. We cannot hold back because of the hurt or anguish that we might have felt at the hands or hearts of someone else. Someone may be out there, right in front of us, which is that perfect solution to "HAPPY". For me, I just go with the flow. I know that I tuck those angels in at night and I smile. I know that someday my "happy" will happen. It may be soon, it may be when I am 80, but it will happen. My happy could be just being me, who knows. I know that I am happy just being a mom, but I know that maybe one day I will enjoy being someone Else's "happy" just as much.

Where the Door Is Always Open..

As you follow the roads on this water encapsulated paradise, you find yourself covered by the larger towering live oaks that sway in the ever present breeze that catches your breath every moment that your here. This is why I stay, for even if you do not have a soft heart or a kind eye, you cannot but help to be seduced by her beauty. Amelia is a place of sweet surrender of all senses. Hearing my children laughing as they play with their friends through the neighborhood in which we live, the calls of the hawks that fly overhead, and the sound of the ocean that you can hear even though we are 7/10 of a mile from it. All enchanting, all encompassing. Walking downtown, listening to the different sounds of life coming from the store fronts as you walk by. Watching the different styles of tourists and locals alike as they walk side by side on the sidewalks where memories are made. Hearing Ms.Cyndi or Mr. Bob as they ride by in their carriages on the elegant tours of historic Fernandina. Hearing the whoops from passersby as Mr. Felix sells his peanuts from his bikes and plays his melodic harmonica. These are the sounds of south in its prime. These are the sounds of Amelia. Children, laughter, surf, tears, joy, and pain. All of these have made this town such a staple on the chart of every person that has ever come across her. This is why I have made her my home and why I shall never leave her. Amelia, for where your heart is always captured and where the door is always open.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall..I am my Mother...EEK!!

While we are young, we have all uttered those infamous words “I will never say that to my children!". Yet, here we are eating those words in which we muttered under our breath so many years ago. For it is now we understand why some animals eat their young and why our mothers’ hair turned that shade of grey so early on in life. It had nothing to do with bad genes or poor diet, it had to do with the un-ending torrent of "Mine's" and "Stop touching me's" or the preverbal " I had it first's". Our mothers were not crazed women; they were normal beings being pushed to that point where the filmmakers got the idea for the movie the "Exorcist". That was not the work of some psychotic mind, which was a memory from youth I'm sure. Mothers are our joy and our pain, all in the same memory of life, as we grow we realize that we have become them in so many ways. We take on not only their way of parenting, but their way of life. They taught us to live as well as to grow. That is how mothers know that each grey hair was worth the glass of wine, the occasional meltdown in middle of the crowded restaurant as they told the world they would never go in public with us again. These are their moments, the shining examples of their life's work. They are remembered in life by what they leave behind...US.