Powwows and Hurricanes

When you meet someone for the first time and you ask them where they are from, they are most likely going to tell you the place that they were born, or maybe the place they consider home.  The place they go to visit Grandma and Grandpa or the place with the sights and smells, to which most of their memories drift.  Home, for me, is and always has been Oklahoma.  Having lived in or just outside of Tulsa County my entire life, I have developed some pretty strong opinions on what it means to be an Oklahoman.  But when asked what part of the country Oklahoma is in, there is usually a pause, followed by a furrowed brow, and confused eye shift because it is very difficult to define. 

Since the state is geographically located close to the middle of the country, it is sometimes considered a Midwest state.  Like its true Midwestern neighbors, there is plenty of agriculture, a lot of middle class working people, and an unabashed love of America.  Oklahomans have gotten their kicks on Route 66, just like our neighbors from St. Louis and Chicago.  However, about the time you start to get comfortable with the notion of being Midwestern, you look down at the strikingly bright red orange dirt on your cowboy boots and realize you’re not in Kansas anymore. 

I believe there is an imaginary line cutting across the Oklahoma plains, that when crossed, changes the ground from normal dirt color to the magnificent red-orange that covers two-thirds of the western part of the state.  I’m sure there is some sort of lengthy scientific explanation for it, but all I really know is that Moms all over western Oklahoma grimace at having to wash those stains out of white socks.  I found it easier to throw them away.   The red dirt and flat open land is probably one reason that many people associate Oklahoma with the West.  As a child, when I would travel to Ohio to visit family, the children in the neighborhood would ask me if I knew any Indians and if there were tumbleweeds blowing down my street.  I would have sarcastically replied that I smoked a peace-pipe just last week while getting our family wagon recovered.  Considering all this, it’s no wonder people think we are a Western state.

Since part of this land was named “Indian Territory” until just over a hundred years ago, the culture of the Indian Nations, from the more well known Cherokee and Creek to the lesser known tribes, have left a footprint on Oklahoma like no other.  There is a tragic history linked to how the Five Civilized Tribes came to call Oklahoma their home.  The Trail of Tears as it came to be known is probably one of the most difficult memories in the history of these proud people.  Their ability to endure and flourish nearly two hundred years later is a testament to their spirit.  I have always been proud of Oklahoma’s Indian heritage but I am painfully aware that many generations before me were not.  In spite of what they’ve had to overcome, many Indian Nations call Oklahoma home and for that I am grateful. 

 I have traveled around the country a bit and have established MY own opinion of where Oklahoma fits into the fabric of this great nation.  I believe we can and should be considered Southern.  That’s right; it’s not just me, but many people adamantly declare that Oklahoma is a Southern State.  I have always leaned this way, but my travels around the South have solidified it.  My friends from Mississippi and Alabama, with their Southern gentility, are too polite to argue with me about it. However, I have learned that traditional Southerners hold firm that a state is not truly Southern unless it fought in the Civil War with the Confederate Army.  I can certainly understand their position.   Those were the states that risked and lost everything for what they believed in.  They were the states that had to fight and claw their way back during the reconstruction period.  But I would ask them to think of it as a compliment, when other states want to be considered one of them.  Here is the gist of my argument.  Oklahoma IS a Southern State for the following reasons.  We drink our tea sweet.  We have not four, but five directions:  North, South, East, West and Yonder.  We worship our Lord on Sundays and our college football teams on Saturdays.  We fry almost anything.  Instead of telling someone we think he is an idiot, we just say, “bless your heart”.  We drink pop, not soda.  We are friendly to everyone, even the “foreigners” from New Jersey.  With all that said, I can hardly see why there is even a debate.  But I imagine there will always be a question about who we are, what region we belong to, and what culture we call our own. 

It you think I have accidentally failed to mention our relationship to Texas, you are mistaken.  It wasn’t an accident.  Just like their tourism department once said, “Texas; it’s like a whole other country”.  In Oklahoma, we believe that.  Yall stay on your side of the river and we’ll stay on ours, except of course, for game day. 

To restate the obvious, Oklahoma is very difficult to define.  It is a complex mix of cultures, landscape, economy, and lifestyles.  Where can you go to a powwow to watch a “Fancy Dance”, visit a state of the art theater to see a world class ballet company, or go to a honkeytonk for some bootscootin all in one weekend?  Oklahoma.  Where can you get stranded in a blizzard with record cold temps, wilt in a severe drought with record hot temps, live through earthquakes, tornadoes, ice storms and hurricanes without ever leaving your home?  Oklahoma.  What other state has produced so many NASA Astronauts, medal winning Olympians, award winning performers, famous politicians, athletes, and had a flippin Rogers and Hammerstein musical written about them for Pete’s sake?!?  I’ll tell you what state. Oklahoma!  That’s right, O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A!  You know you’re singing it right now.  So if you are reading this post from anywhere else in the country and you thought you knew a lot about us, I have only one thing to say,……”Yall come down yonder,  have a pop, and we’ll talk about things.”  By things, of course, I mean Oklahoma State football.  Love YALL!!!

A Graceful Age

A year ago, I turned 45 and had a bit of a mid-life crisis.  By the way, I DO consider 45 as mid-life because it is my intention to live to be 100.  Part of the crisis was the realization that there were certain irreversible changes happening to my physical appearance.  In short, I was looking old and haggard.  Immediately I embarked on a quest to find the best concealer and homeopathic methods for "reducing the signs of aging" as the advertisers so delicately word it.  A facial and makeover done by an understanding friend helped in the moment, but I woke the next morning looking exactly the same as the day before.  Though I have tried to be grateful about how God made me and have never really been self-conscious about my appearance, there was an increasing amount of concern over the everchanging minute details that looked back from the mirror each day.  Natural light became my nemesis.  Flourescent lighting, forget it.  The makeup bag I carried in my purse became fatter and more well worn.  I reluctantly accepted that I would need to start buying higher end department store cosmetics and that my "easy breezy CoverGirl" days were over.   

My apologies to any men reading this post, because there is most likely no empathy or even understanding of these issues.  Believe me when I say the feeling is mutual from my gender.  I may let my husband write a counterpoint to this someday about the trials of the ageing male, but for now, this is about women.  Deal with it.  

The parade of elixers, cleansers, remedies and cosmetics went on for many months.  There were even a few times when drastic measures were considered, but a fear of looking like someone from the "Real Housewives" kept me off that ledge.  Not that there is anything wrong with cosmetic surgery, it's just not for me.  Midway through my 45th year, something happened that completely changed my attitude.  My mom, my two older sisters and I got to spend a rare weekend together.  These are the women that I feel the most comfortable with, that I can completely be me around, and that have the ability to make me feel like the 6 year old baby sister with one look.  They are women that I trust completely and I knew that if I shared my concerns with them, they would help me find the right combination of chin hair remover and excess neck skin reducer to make me feel like my younger self.  But something even better happened.

After I shared my crisis with them, there was very little response.  It wasn't that they were unintrested, but more that they didn't understand why I was so concerned.  You see, they had gotten what I had failed to get.  Aging happens, just like weather happens, and there is nothing you can do about it, you might as well embrace it and enjoy it.  So throughout my time with them, and for the first time in a long time, I looked at them.  Closely.  Which led me to the most profound conclusion.  My two sisters and my mom, with whom I share DNA, who are older then me and cosmetic surgery free, are without a doubt the most beautiful women that I know.  They have the same sparkly blue eyes that I looked to for approval as a child.  The have the same smiles that brought me out of many a funk, when I was a teenager.  Their arms and shoulders produce the same hugs that have shared in my joys and comforted me in my failures throughout my life.  I realized that if I am blessed enough to be even a fraction of how beautiful they are throughout this thing called getting older, than I am TRULY blessed.  In fact, God has blessed my family with many generations of beautiful women.  My cousins, beautiful;  my neices, beautiful.  It's not just the women in this family by blood, but some have married into it and they share in this beauty. 

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I have changed my perspective on how it looks to grow older.  There seems to be a better way to hang on to my youth.  I have added a few new items to my make up bag.....contentedness and serenity.  They can't be purchased at a designer cosmetic store.  In fact you can really only receive them from God.  After all, He was the one that said, 1 Samuel 16:7 - "The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." (NIV)  Accepting that truth has brought me nearly out of this crisis.  Oh I still cover the grays, conceal the dark circles and pluck the random chin hairs, but I do this with the knowledge that God has me in His hand and my future has nothing to do with how I look, but how my heart looks to Him.  

Now as my 46th birthday comes and goes, I pray that my daughters, neices, and granddaughters will embrace the idea that, how their heart looks to the Lord, is so much more important than how they look to the world.  I pray that someday when I am even older, grayer, more wrinkled and speckeled, that they will look at me and see the same powerful beauty that comes from the women in my life that have paved that graceful ageing road before me.    Love all you beautiful ladies!!!!  

 

A Straight Line

Most people agree that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  Why is it, then, that we do not apply that same simple equation to all things in life; specifically in the way we communicate.  OK I know this is already starting to sound boring, but stay with me here.  Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, can make me more crazy than a person that talks endlessly, but never really says anything.  I realize that I have the attention span of a three year old on Mountain Dew, but is it really necessary for the lady at the book store cash register to review every book she's ever read while ringing me up?  Just take my money and tell me to have a nice day, thank you very much.  If people don't get to the point within a sentance or two, they should know that my thoughts have moved on from what they are saying,  to when I'm going to make time to pluck my eyebrows or how to get the motor oil fingerprints off of my favorite tea pitcher.  Don't ask. The irony of my rambling on about this subject is not lost on me.  This is, however, my blog so you must have some reason to still be here and I can assure you, I am on my way to a point.

It's not just the going on and on about nothing that I get frustrated with, there is the whole matter of saying something, but meaning something else, and expecting the person with whom you are speaking to know the difference.  Allow me to give you an example.  When my husband says, "can we bake some cookies tonight?", what he really means is "will you bake me some cookies tonight?".  Why he does not say what he means, I will never know.  It has taken me over a decade to figure out exactly what he meant in the first place.  He doesn't want to flat out ask me to bake the cookies because he doesn't want to be inconsiderate, however, if he could somehow get me to think that he will be involved in the baking of the cookies and it was actually my idea and I offered to do it, he gets his cookies and I never knew the difference.  As you might guess, dealing with someone as direct as me  has caused my poor husband more than a few "misunderstandings".   My motto is "I mean what I say and I say what I mean".  The implication is that there is never an underlying meaning or slip of the tongue.  This is, of course, far from the truth.  In a perfect world of communication, there would be no saying one thing and meaning another.  There would be no misunderstandings because we would all say exactly the right thing and the other person would have complete comprehension.  Which leads me to my last (and most important) communication peeve.

Every communication expert will tell you that over 90% of communication is non-verbal, meaning when we talk with someone, less than 10% of our communication comes from the words we speak.  The other 90% is in our body language, facial expressions, use of space, eye contact, etc.  So with these facts, it is safe to assume that we lose 90% of our communication skills when we e-mail, text, Facebook, twitter, etc.  That's 90% folks.  Imagine how difficult this sentance would be if I eliminated 90% of it?  It would look something like this:
Ima     w    i  lt    t    s   t   nce    ou    b   I  mi      d   %  it? 
Difficult to fully understand what I was saying in that last one huh?  It is for this reason that I will no longer communicate via text with someone that doesn't know me really well, unless it is something short or insignificant.  I will only communicate on Facebook if I am saying something cryptic or silly.  Trying to carry on a meaningful conversation or having a disagreement with someone using these forms of communication can be a really slippery slope.  Texting and Facebook communication is definately convenient (and safer than risking a never ending phone call from the aforementioned talker), but there is much danger for poor communication.  I have seen (and shamefully been involved in) many Facebook fights that really ended up causing hurt feelings and scarred relationships.  Who among us has not been blindsided by the dreaded "unfriend" in the midst of one of these.  In some circles, this is the social equivelant to ripping the sleeve of your shirt and announcing "you are dead to me!".  I ask you, what could possibly be worse.

Once again, I am guilty of doing the very thing I said frustrated me which is  rambling on.   The point I have been laboring to get to is this;  we have so much power with that little fleshy muscle called the tongue and we should be ever mindful to use it for good and not evil.  We have the power to bore, to educate, to encourage, to destroy, to spread love or to spread hate.  The Bible says, in James 3:5 that "the tongue is a small thing, that makes grand speeches.  But a tiny spark can set a great forrest on fire".  So, for all you ramblers and sufferers of diarrhea of the mouth, remember God gave us two ears and one mouth.  Each to be used accordingly.  For those of us that speak our minds and think that we have every right to do so, remember, just like toothepaste, once it's out of the tube there's no putting it back in.  Let us all be mindful of what we say, and how we say it.  I will leave you with this nugget of wisdom gained from one of my favorite sources of knowledge, The Real Housewives of New York, that goes....."say only what you mean, only don't say it mean."  Now those are words to live by.