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What’s In A Name?

June 26, 2010 – 6:53 am

So, I’m a day late … you’ll have to decide whether or not I’m a dollar short.  I was off the grid yesterday, floating down a river in a tube with a group of teenagers and their moms (and a few dads).  Well … we each had our own tube.  There are now sunburns aplenty and at the end of the day a lot of smiles, weary arms, and tired legs, but we had so so much fun.  What a grand day it was.

Yesterday’s prompt – How do you feel about the name given to you at birth?

I was given Sonja by my parents.  It is an odd name for my cohort generation.  Most girls with that given name and spelling were first generation immigrants from an eastern European nation.  I am not.  I’m all English and some branches of my family tree can be traced back to the Mayflower, others to the Revolutionary War.  But I do not have any Eastern European roots (an unfortunate state of affairs).

I hated my name in elementary school.  I was surrounded by Peggys and Kims and Marys and Beths.  Growing up in a tiny backwoods Vermont town where everyone had known each other for several generations, I was the odd child, with the odd name.  Teachers couldn’t pronounce it because of the pesky silent “j” or they persisted in making the “o” long rather than short.  Sometimes they would forget entirely and call me “Tanya,” then wonder at my lack of response.  Children couldn’t pronounce or remember my name either, so I lived on the fringe for a lot of elementary school.

I remember asking my mom to change my name at some point.  She suggested that we could do so, but it would be to the second place name (the also ran) that I did not get named when I was born.

Nellie.

I was horrified.  For those of you who know me on Facebook, you know my maiden name begins with “N”, so I would move from the merely strange to the geeky and weird world of alliteration.  That was an unacceptable alternative.  I stuck it out with “Sonja.”

I’m glad I did.  As I got older it became who I am.  I began to learn more about the name.  It is the Slavic version of “Sophia” and means wisdom.  I’ve always loved that.  I was thrilled when LightHusband when to Germany once and came back with a mug with my name on it because you never see my name on anything here.  Ever.

All throughout grade school and high school I was the only “Sonja.”  It was just me.  I began to really enjoy that in a deep down quiet way.  Then in my senior year another Sonja came to the school!  And she was a senior!!!  To make matters worse, she was absolutely stunningly beautiful and kind!!  AND … because of the way things worked out with our last names we were put right next to one another in the year book.  It was the ultimate irony.

Now I have embraced my name and really love it.  I don’t mind when people mis-pronounce it, but I still don’t respond to Tanya.  I do correct the spelling if it’s important because I love the “j” and as a visual person I think putting a “y” or an “i” in there makes my name look like someone else.  I know that’s stupid, but there it is.  Most of the time I leave it alone, though, because it’s a petty thing.  I get a huge and silly thrill out of running across other women who spell their name like me.  I don’t know why, but I think we should start a club because there are not so many of us.

So that’s about all there is to know about my given name.  Some day I’ll write the story of my middle name and how I had a major depressive episode (that’s what they call nervous breakdowns these days).

Sonja | NaBlaPoMo, children, family, joy | Comments (2)

What If …

June 24, 2010 – 11:51 am

Perhaps you’ve played this game. Your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse lets you have one free pass — one special man or woman who is so attractive and out of reach that if circumstances allowed it, your partner would allow you to sleep with that person. Most monogamous couples feel safe with the free pass rule as it’s more theoretical than practical. Sill, if your partner gave you a free pass, would you use it? On who?

For the short answer see Tuesday’s post. There at the bottom … where the prompt asked about whether it’s ever permissible to cheat?

No.

It’s just not how I roll.  Because even if LightHusband gave me permission (and … uh … I seriously doubt it), it’s still cheating.  There it is.  I feel pretty strongly about this.  23 years ago this August, I made some promises before God and our gathered family and friends.  I take them seriously.  Really.  I do.  And to me, with permission or without permission, once that veil is pierced there’s no going back.

Trust and relationship would be badly broken.  Does it mean that it can never be repaired?  I don’t know.  Frankly though it’s a place I’m not interested in exploring.  I have enough broken, screwed up, hard places in my life without creating more for myself and for my husband and children.  I have so many relationships where trust got broken without the issue of infidelity, that I don’t see how it would be possible.

So there it is.  My inner conservative coming out to play.  There are one or two things upon which I do not ever budge.  This is one of them.  If I were ever to feel as though I needed to wander outside of our marriage, then (in my mind) that points out much larger problems in the marriage relationship that need to be addressed.

None of this is to say that there is not a really special person or love from my past that would not be tempting.  There is, but he is not worth the damage it would do.  Protecting my family and friends from the concentric ripples of dismay and hurt that fan out when relationships go awry and twist in the wind have more value than my selfish desires.

I guess all of this makes me not cool.  An old fart, so to speak.  That’s okay.  I’ve been this way most of my life.  I’ll keep on keepin’ on.  Because that is how I roll.

Sonja | NaBlaPoMo, community, family | Comments (3)

Doing Something Nice

June 23, 2010 – 7:31 am

So … today’s prompt is this -

Do something nice for someone today. Then tell us about what you did.

Really?  You’re kidding.  I find myself wondering just what that would look like.

Oh.  Not the doing something nice.  I do that all the time and I’m not going to tell you about it here, because that’s decidedly not how I roll.  And that’s the problem.  I do do so-called nice things for people.  And by the way, I hate the word “nice” so I’m going to use the word “kind” or “gracious” from now on.

You see, I call that living a missional life.  My calling in this world is to reflect Jesus to the people around me.  Of course, most of the time, when they look at me or how I live they get a fun-house mirror reflection of him, because I’m all human and totally screwed up.  But I do have this dance with the Holy Spirit (or as I like to call her, Soraya), that I live in.  My dance naturally includes a lot of other people.  But if I tell anyone what I’m doing or what I’ve done, that will take all the fun and all the mystery and all the joy out of it.  Telling people (or writing about it here) will change the focus of how I live.  It will put the focus on me and that is not where it belongs.

So I will do, as always, several acts of kindness today.  But I won’t tell anyone about them.

Sonja | NaBlaPoMo, being jesus, faith, missional | Comments (3)

Monday’s Child …

June 22, 2010 – 5:34 pm

… or is that a blog prompt.  Either way here’s my goods from Monday … and as you’ll see it’s a nice segue into Tuesday too.

What was the worst job you ever had?

This is difficult because I was always able to find some redeemable quality in every job I ever had.  So every time I start to think about the “worst” job, I remember something good too and then mark it off my list.  And I’ve done a lot of different jobs in my time too.

I began my working career as a babysitter.  I was in fairly hot demand in my hometown and if I remember correctly topped out at the whopping high cost of $.75 per hour back in 1979 when I graduated from high school.  Hey … I paid for my class ring and most of my clothes with that salary.  During the summer I was also an assistant swimming instructor and part-time life guard.  I was the go-to gal when the little kids were scared to put their face in the water.  I could always get them comfortable and feeling good enough to put their little faces in, blow bubbles and jump in off the dock by the end of the session.  Cause I’m a cheerleader for tots … or something.  But I really, really liked that job.

During college part of my financial aid package involved being on the work-study program, so I got assigned some sort of interesting jobs there.  My first year I was an assistant in the chem lab.  This meant I got to work in the shop where they mixed up all the stuff for the experiments each week.  That was a blast.  I loved that job.  It totally satisfied my inner nerd.  But by the next year it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t going to pursue a science degree so the job had to go to an actual nerd and I was assigned a job in the school snack shop.  There I learned to waitress, work the counter and be a short order chef (and make a mean tuna melt too).  I worked there for my sophomore and senior years.  I didn’t work my junior year because I was away from my main campus on a special study program.

After college I had a bunch of different (mainly secretarial) jobs in a variety of institutions here in the DC area.  I worked from 1983 to 1994 when LightGirl was born.  After she was born my job was to take care of her and then LightBoy and lose my mind.  I have been extremely successful at losing my mind; my relative success at raising children may or may not be seen until after my death.  During some of the time I was working, I was also going to graduate school at George Mason University in pursuit of a Masters in secondary education.  I thought it might be a good idea to be a teacher.  That never quite worked out for a variety of reasons, but while I was doing that I worked as a temporary office worker.  It was then that I had what would be my worst job ever.

Oh.  It didn’t start out that way.  It started out sort of fun and light-hearted.  And as a redemptive quality, I met one of my oldest and dearest friends at this job.  We were tight.  We still keep in touch.  We had a lot of fun together, laughing, talking, working.  We worked for an auctioneer.  It was a small business owned by two brothers who auctioned oriental carpets (persian rugs) on the weekends.  At first it seemed really innocuous.  My friend and I were in charge of setting up the auctions around the country; usually two or three per weekend.  We had to run ads in the local papers.  Ads for the auction and ads to hire local labor.  We had to set up hotels, auction venues, etc.  It didn’t seem like it was terrible.  But then we went to one.  And it wasn’t terrible, but it was really on the dishonest side.    By that time, I’d worked there long enough that I rationalized the dishonesty even though it made me feel very dirty.  LightHusband and I needed the money as we were very nearly broke because of some medical bills and I was still trying to get a job teaching.  However, the day came that one of the brothers asked me to sign letters of appraisal verifying the value of the rugs they had sold one particular weekend.  He gave me a title which indicated that I had knowledge of persian rugs that I did not and do not have.  I wish I could say that I quit on the spot.  I didn’t.  I was entirely too shocked and dismayed.  I signed approximately five letters and went home.  Talked to LightHusband about the situation and quit the next day.  There’s a lot I’ll put up with … grumpy bosses who pull rank and my vacation time (because they want to go to the beach with their boyfriend), customers who swear at me on the phone, c0-workers who are jerks, bosses who’ve fired me 3 hours after telling me they’re renewing my contract (and two weeks after having a mis-carriage), etc.  But I won’t ever, not not ever, engage in fraud.

Which leads me to today’s question/prompt:

Do you think it’s ever permissible to cheat?

No.

I just hope that speeding is not counted as cheating.  Because then I would be in big trouble.

Sonja | NaBlaPoMo, children, odd jobs | Comments Off

Two-Fer

June 18, 2010 – 7:36 am

Today you get two for the price of one … because I forgot yesterday.  Or got distracted.  Or something.

Without further adieu …

What’s the one food you feel like you couldn’t live without? What’s the one food you’d rather die than put in your mouth?

I cannot live without ice cream.  Chocolate ice cream.  With nuts.  And/or brownies in it.  Ice cream is what God eats.  But it doesn’t make Him/Her gain any weight.

The food I’d rather die than put in my mouth?  Canned fish, not tuna, but things like sardines or mussels, or octopi … horrible snotty bits of oily smelly seafood that look like turds in a tin.  [shudder]  LightHusband and LightBoy love these in a very primal way.  It makes my stomach turn just to write these sentences.

If you could take a train journey through any part of the world, where would you go?

For all of our married life LightHusband has loved to tease me with the idea that he is going to take me to Kenya and we’ll live in a hut there.  Now, lest you think I’m a suburban princess who cannot get by in a hut, that is not why I find this forbidding.  It’s the heat and humidity.  Sub-saharan Africa has always looked like hell to me because I hate heat.  Cannot stand it.  I’d much rather be cold than hot and I’ve been this way since I was a very small child.

So when I daydreamed about this question I was very surprised by the pictures that came to mind.  I saw myself in a train, a very old-fashioned steam powered train (by the way), traveling slowly through sub-Saharan Africa!!  This train went through lots of small tiny places and I got off everywhere and walked deep into the bush so that I could visit the back of beyond and meet people.  It was a fabulous trip.  And I loved it.

P.S.  The train was not air-conditioned.  I just wanted all of you to know that.

Sonja | NaBlaPoMo, dreams, fat bottomed girls, fun, ice cream, silliness | Comments (3)

Fears

June 16, 2010 – 6:02 am

What’s your greatest fear?

We had an (ahem) interesting day yesterday.  LightGirl had a very negative reaction to some meds she’d begun taking.  I won’t go into the details of it here, but we ended up in the ER just to make sure she was okay.  As the meds metabolized she was alright, but we had a frightening couple of hours.  She will not be taking those meds anymore.  She has a pattern of strange responses to medication and I think we need to be more careful about introducing it to her system (but that’s another story).

The whole situation highlighted for me how frightening it is when I cannot take care of the people I love.  I’m not one of those moms who ran around wiping every drippy nose or making the house spotless or anything like that.  But it’s important to me that my peeps are happy and healthy.  When there are circumstances in their lives that are beyond anyone’s control and certainly beyond my control, it really freaks me out.  So … I guess I have two greatest fears; they vie for first place depending on the day, sometimes there are three.

One is that I will die before my children reach adulthood and can stand on their own.  It’s important to me that I see the LightChildren through to their own two feet.  I’d also like know their children.

Another is some sort of apocalyptic event that would separate us from our extended family in New England … they would die or we would die or we couldn’t get to them or something like that.

A third is that one of the LightChildren will die or become severely maimed before reaching adulthood.  As I watched LightGirl in the ER yesterday and contemplated the what-ifs of her situation, I was horrified.  My mind could only dance around the fringes and waltz away to hope.  We were extremely fortunate that the incident indeed appears to have been caused by the meds and she was back to her normal self by evening.

So what about you, what is/are your greatest fear?

Sonja | NaBlaPoMo, ain't nuthin can be done, children, grief, prayers | Comments Off

Superpowers

June 15, 2010 – 8:05 am

What’s your superpower?

Tilting at Windmills

My superpower is tilting at windmills.  From Wikipedia -

Tilting at windmills is an English idiom which means attacking imaginary enemies, or fighting unwinnable or futile battles. The word “tilt”, in this context, comes from jousting. (emphasis mine … for … well … emphasis).

I can’t decide if I should pick my battles better, or carry on knowing that I am simply planting the seeds for future winnable battles.  I’m still pondering that …

Sonja | NaBlaPoMo, books, dreams, freedom, fun things to know and tell, gifts, life, silliness | Comments (1)

Apologies

June 13, 2010 – 4:56 pm

The three people who are still reading this blog after my long hiatus, know that I have started writing again using a series of blog prompts put on by National Blog Posting Month found by clicking on that link back there.  I found it through one of the writers in my feed reader.  The day (last Monday) she posted, the prompt was this:

Do you owe an apology to anyone? Why?

That’s been rattling around in my head since then.  I did not post anything that day.  I’ve toyed with the idea of back posting ever since because … well … because.

Ready for the Ball

Friday night LightGirl went on her first date.  She and her date went to a dance; the Blumen Ball the dance committee called it.  It was a semi-formal dance put on for homeschoolers.  KidCourageous (as he shall be known here) asked her to go about 10 days before the event.  She accepted and they both were very excited (on a scale of 1 to Christmas morning they agreed it was like going back to Hogwarts).  They had a wonderful time and danced the whole evening.  Their chauffeur for the evening was KidCourageous’ older brother.  LightGirl was presented with a wrist corsage and KidCourageous was a perfect gentleman all evening.  She is still (Sunday morning) walking on air.  If you are friends with me on FaceBook you can see photos there.

There was only one small snag.  Several of the young men in LightGirl & KidCourageous’ group of friends thought it would be fun and funny to play games with them during the dance.  These young men would surround them and separate the two of them regularly throughout the evening.  It might have been funny had it only happened once or twice, but as young men are wont to do, they carried it on for too long and too far.  LightGirl and KidCourageous became frustrated with the situation.  But they handled it graciously and kindly without creating any fuss.

The next night, the ringleader of the young men was chatting with LightGirl on FaceBook (which they do regularly).  She was still pretty upset with him for the antics of the previous evening.  I encouraged her to let him know that she was unhappy, but to be kind about it.  I guess she must have because he attempted to apologize.  It was a rusty attempt because I’m not certain he does this very often.  But all the ingredients were there … he acknowledged that he had behaved badly, he empathized that it was hurtful, and he agreed that he shouldn’t have done it.  The only thing lacking were the specific words, “I’m sorry.”  But those are the least important words in an apology; he included the more important ones.  I haven’t been able to convince LightGirl that this is in fact an apology yet.  She (at the time) was still too upset and hurt by past interactions with this young man to be objective.  But I was really proud of him for taking that risk.  She will come around and be able to see it in a day or so.  My hope is that he will not be feeling rejected by then and their friendship will be restored.  I think it will … they seem to practice this sort of thing on each other regularly and are getting better and better at it every time.

The whole incident pointed out some things about apologies to me that I’ve been reflecting on for some time now.

The first thing is this … an apology is a risky business.  The person apologizing puts themselves in a vulnerable position vis a vis the person (or group) they are apologizing to.  They are giving power and/or control over to that person/group.  Forgiveness is a form of acceptance and redemption gives one re-entry to the relationship.  When one apologizes one acknowledges both wrongdoing and that the other person may or may not offer grace in return.  The restoration of the relationship is entirely in the hands of the person to whom one has apologized in that moment.

A proper apology consists of several necessary ingredients – an acknowledgment of wrong/bad/hurtful behavior, empathy with the person/group who was harmed by the behaviour, and agreement both that it should not have happened and that one will endeavor to prevent it from happening again.

Apologies cannot be demanded or manipulated.  They can only be offered free and clear by the person who is apologizing.  If they are not offered, but instead are made in response to a demand or as a result of manipulation they will be useless or empty.  One cannot acknowledge wrong/bad/hurtful behaviour when one doesn’t know what one has done.  This happens when an apology is demanded or manipulated as a condition to restore one’s relationship.  One can only be mournfully sorry about general malfunctions if an apology is demanded or manipulated.

Most often, though, between adults (and near adults), apologies run in both directions.  It is extraordinarily rare among two parties to a dispute to have only one which needs to apologize.  When wrongs have been done they often have been committed by both parties.

If you’ve been around here for any length of time, you may recall an ugly leave-taking with my CLB back in early-ish 2007.  It was hard.  It was hurtful.  It was/is permanent.  It was a long drawn out process, during which an apology was demanded of me in order that my relationships in the church might be restored.  I had no idea what apologize for so it was empty and meaningless.  But I was trying to do anything I could to restore balance and harmony to relationships that had strayed badly off course.

I’m now apologizing to the people in question here.  I still have no idea what the instigating issues were (though I have been told many times that I do).  However, I can apologize for my very poor behavior during that months long process.  I was defensive, angry and embattled.  I was also very depressed.  In the words of Paul the apostle, what I wanted to do, I could not do and I knew that I was doing what I did not want to do.  Call it arrogance (certainly), call it tunnel vision, call it depression, or some of all of that  and some other things that I have yet to identify, but I could not see any other path at the time than the one I/we traveled.  I know that did damage to the people I was close to.  I know our abrupt departure was frightening, upsetting, and painful.  I apologize for that.  I wish it could have been different.  I wish I were different; stronger, better, wiser.  But I’m not.  I’m zealous, over-protective, and type A-high maintenance.  In an attempt to preserve feelings and group unity, I kept secrets I should not have kept.  Revealing them here, or now would not be profitable.  But keeping them at the time proved ultimately harmful to everyone, including me.  They seemed harmless.  But secrets never are.  All things kept in the dark ultimately prove to be harmful.

I know that I am in a much healthier frame of mind now.  I have more tools at my disposal for communicating my difference of opinion with others without being as confrontational as I’ve been in the past.  Do I think that any of this will or would change anything?  I don’t know.  All I know is that I need to do this for my own peace of mind.  How it is received and what is done with it is out of my hands.   If I had been healthier at the time there is a chance I might have been able to exit with less damage.  Maybe.  But … I’d hate to speculate now.  What happens now … who knows?

Sonja | NaBlaPoMo, church, community, life, life with teens, lost in translation, peace, reconciliation | Comments (5)

First Kiss

June 11, 2010 – 6:14 am

Well, this is awkward.  Today’s prompt from NaBloPoMo is -

Tell us about your first kiss.

So.

Just how personal (read vulnerable) do I want to be here in internet land?  How much of my past do I want to reveal?  And the larger question, do I even remember my first kiss?

The answer to the last question is, “No. No, I do not remember my first kiss.”  I do however, remember my first boyfriend.  And I remember a much later boyfriend and a first kiss that mattered much more.  I’ll tell the story of the first boyfriend, but not the story of the later boyfriend (no, it was not LightHusband) … it’s only the interesting people who have a checkered past, you know ;-) .

I have a theory about the eighth grade and being 13.  It is the year one is at one’s most stupid/foolish during adolescence.  That is the year when we engage in the silliest behaviors. Some children chose a path that year which will make all of adolescence and highschool difficult.  Others manage to regain their footing and continue through the teen years on a more even, yet still turbulent, keel.  I was part of the latter group.  I have several friends from eighth (and even seventh or sixth grade) who I maintain contact with.  We all shake our collective heads regretfully when recalling eighth grade.  It was not a good year.

In particular, my one of my very best friends (maid of honor in each other’s weddings, etc.) and I both “went out” with boys when we were in eighth grade.  This begs the question, where did we go?  We grew up in the hills of Vermont.  It was a 20 minute drive to our highschool (grades 7-12 and it drew from 5 towns).  How, exactly, do 13 year olds go on a date?  It was crazy.  Mostly we were in love with an idea.  So, here is the sad, embarrassing story of my eighth grade romance.

He was in ninth grade and an older boy.  Blonde hair, blue eyes … the only blonde I would ever date.  He played saxophone in the band, and I played flute, so I expect that is how we knew one another.  He gave me his ID bracelet to wear as a pledge of his daily troth and short-lived like.  I don’t remember much about our relationship except that when it was over, I was embarrassed by it.  What was I thinking?  There are three events in our relationship that stand out.  The first is that one day he came over to my house to “hang out” for a while.  We disappeared into the hayshed to “make out.”  It was a huge disappointment to me.  Neither one of us knew what we were doing, so it was just kissing (this was good), but the kissing was bad (this was probably also good).  I remember thinking that if this was all there was to kissing and making out, I didn’t see what the big deal was; it was sort of boring.  [Never fear, I found out otherwise later in life ;-) ]

The second event was a time when my brothers and I were going to see Young Frankenstein (with Gene Wilder).  The 8GBF and I tried to turn it into a date.  This was quashed.  I was furious with my mother.  But the movie was so funny, I got over it quickly.

The last event was breaking up.  I was free.  I ran to tell my friends.  Here was something that I had wanted so badly, but it had become a shackle around my neck.   I never regretted breaking up with him.  Oddly, I was always slightly embarrassed by the relationship until writing this blog post.  Now, I’m inclined to think that perhaps we were necessary to each others’ growing up.  Maturing is hardly ever easy, sometimes we are assisted by the mostly unlikely of people.

Sonja | NaBlaPoMo, family, girls, history, life with teens | Comments (1)

In Which I Am Sixteen

June 10, 2010 – 6:36 am

For today’s snack, we have a walk down memory lane:

If you could go back in time and meet your 16-year-old self, what three things would you tell yourself?

Well … now.  Things just got really heavy, didn’t they?  And sort of existential or something like it.  I’m bleary-eyed this morning because I stayed up too late watching the Chicago Blackhawks win Lord Stanley’s Cup last night.  This might be more raw than ordinary because I am less guarded than usual … so here goes.

I would tell my baby girl self (even though she would not listen) that time is a finite resource.  When you are sixteen your life stretches out before you in an almost limitless road with countless possibilities.  Choose.  Pick something, anything and do it well.

I would also tell her to enjoy herself more and be responsible less.  That it’s okay to have fun once in a while and be less serious all the time.

Last, I would tell my LightGirl self that all the world really is her oyster.  She really is that smart, that good and she really can make it.  She really is the sort of girl who can make it out in the world; there’s nothing to be afraid of.  When the time comes (and it will) she should just jump in with both feet and swim.

Sonja | NaBlaPoMo, blog stuff, dreams, girls, history, hope | Comments Off