Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

May Your Day Be Merry and Bright

Good morning everyone, and Merry Christmas from the Sharp house.  We are fortunate to have two out of five of our heart puzzle pieces here with us to celebrate.  Toby is in from Denver, Kendall is in from Boston.  Daniel joins us in a couple days, and Culley & Sean opened presents with us via Facetime earlier.  (If you are on FB (video there), the ultimate gift was opened by T from Culley and Sean.  A sequined pillow where a quick wipe across reveals Nic Cage's face.)

As Rudy and I adjust to the changes that their young adult life inevitably visit upon us - that of it being harder to get everyone here - I am happy that some things stay the same.  

Yes, Virginia.

Your donations in our tenth year have made magic.  I smile knowing how many little faces will be merry and bright as they open toys, clothes, shoes, boots.  My heart is warmed as I know three homes are toasty because you kept the gas on.  And there will be content tummies, not just today, but for a while, as your help provided $1400 in grocery gift cards to so many in need.  Your generosity reached into our own blogmunity to help those among us who are in crisis currently. 

While I will share if pictures are provided, I do have some heartfelt words from some, and with their permission to share, I hope you feel the spirit of this day, but even more, the spirit of this incredible community everyday.

Merry Christmas to you all, and much love from the entire Sharp family - of which we consider you all a part.

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Who would have thought some 10-15 years ago that such a ragtag group of American Idol addicts would find each other, build relationships and grow into our own special family thru a blog writer that entertained us with her retelling of nightly events from the show. We have shared life stories, struggles, achievements, disappointments and many other aspects of ourselves. We have been through joy, despair, pain and triumphs. Through it all, we have stuck together and created our safe place.

I don’t have a lot of close family and friends anymore or those I can personally reach out to for support or advice. You folks have become that for me.

I recently shared a request for that good old DGMS mojo that we have seen work it’s magic. Almost immediately after sharing, our fearless leader, Linda Sharp, reached out to me on behalf of our Yes, Virginia fund. I had requested spiritual support. Linda saw there could be a need for more physical support during this time.

Knowing I was going to be out of work and without immediate income until leave of absence funds kick in, there were concerns about immediate needs. A grocery gift card was immediately received. A Honey Baked ham is also in the fridge so there will be Christmas dinner.

Knowing how I am about the grand babies and wanting to share the joy of seeing them open just one gift from Nana, Iris now has a “my first babydoll” waiting, and Gavin will be getting his first Little Tykes remote control car. Being who she is, a second rc car was sent so Randy could drive cars with him. Not to leave anyone out, leggings and socks were also included for Mary.

Just a few days later when I talked to the group again about the horrendous pain that is still with me, Linda again asked what could be done. A sitz bath and soaking salt is now being used several times a day to help with that pain. The softest and most plush blanket I have ever seen is also being used that helps me feel as if I’m floating on a cloud.

So DGMSers, while Linda might be the elf that does the shopping, none of it would be possible without this amazing family of friends. Please know I love you all and thank you from the bottom of my heart for caring. I may have to suffer for a while, but I will get through this some how some way. Wishing each of you and yours a very Merry Christmas. Have a drink, a glass of wine or an eggnog for me. No drinking for me while on pain meds.

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To my DGMS family, Yes, you’ve helped one of your own. My dear Linda reached out to me to check on things. I never ask for help, too embarrassed . She made possible for us to have a decent Christmas. I’ve been worried about so much lately (my health, my husbands health, Hailey and other circumstances) but I don’t have to worry about a smile on my daughters face Christmas morning. You all are my family. I am blessed to have you in my life and I am humbled and grateful beyond measure. Thank you everyone. Merry Christmas!

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Thank you so much for the video camera that I can use to keep an eye on Cody with. I know you understand how difficult it is when you have a sick dog, and to have to go to work every day and leave him alone was so difficult. With this camera I can look in on him frequently with the app on my cell phone and see what is going on with him and all the rest of the pack.

I know some may not understand, however to me he is one of my kids and knowing I can look in on him is such a relief.

I will promise to pay this forward. You do such great things for the DGMS community and I feel blessed to have found all of you.

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Whew ... What a crazy few days. Funeral last night for a friend and Mom's surgery is in 9 hours so I need to catch some sleep before that, but didn't want to delay any longer in asking you to send my angel a truly heart-felt thank you. The girls and I have had a blast looking through, and playfully arguing over the goods. I'm so thankful to have some new to me items, since even thrift store shopping has been out of my budget. The gift card! Who hoo! I'm letting my youngest pick gifts for her siblings with it, and with the left overs, I'll try to get a vacuum. I appreciate every ounce of help and hope that you and all my sisters at DGMS have given me. It's so hard for me to say "I need help" because most times in my life I've been on my own to figure things out. The pure love, along with the gifts, and the groceries have bowled me over on every level. With everything else going on, I don't know if there would have been anything under the tree (still have to get one??!!!) this year. I love you and appreciate you!

Things That Go Lump (in my throat) In The Night - More Yes, Virginia

I know, I know, I just wrote about YV last night before going to bed, but a lot happens in the night.

Waking up in the wee hours, I did what you're not supposed to do - I grabbed my phone.  Checking for news updates, looking at my kids' Insta stories, and finally checking my email.  And there it was.  A new Yes, Virginia request.  You know that old country music joke?  I have tears in my ears from lying on my back crying over you?  That was me.

And my heart has not yet recovered.

Receiving these requests, vetting them, being trusted with the most personal details of a person's story - I will say it again, I am never not humbled by the trust placed in me.  By their trust in pouring out their worst moments, fears, needs.  Your trust in donating to our effort to effect change in their lives, if even for a day.

The email that came in the dark is from another someone in our midst.  The crushing weight of everything this person shoulders is difficult to even read - there are struggles and horrors the majority of us will never face, let alone have to conquer.  Yet this person does because as my mother always says, There's nothing to it, but to do it.

This person has a family that depends on her.  Like you, like me.  She is facing health concerns that could be any of ours to face.  She spends her every waking moment worrying about making ends meet, insuring they have food, protecting her nest.  There are no extras.  There is nothing that has been put away for a rainy day, because the rain simply won't stop.

Yet she perseveres.

Helping with food?  Done.  Your donations are heading to their home in the form of a Walmart gift card.  There will be something beyond beans and rice for Christmas dinner.

But what made my ears wet from running tears, my heart implode, was this line.  In talking about how understanding her daughter is, how sensitive she is to the struggles they face, how her child truly does not expect anything for Christmas: I bought her a journal ... and let her pick out a toothpaste flavor this last week. 

I wrote a couple years ago about a dear friend whose own childhood included Christmas meaning they got to choose a cereal.  A CEREAL. 

And now this young person is happy to get to choose a toothpaste flavor.

It is so important to me to be able to share details like this with you - always done with the person's prior consent - because this is not about buying iPhones or Play Stations.  Your money never goes for anything like that.  But your donations mean this mother will be able to gift her daughter with a body wash she wants, a sweatshirt, and for the others in the home?  Again, quoting with permission: I suspect a nice roast will blow them away. I have visions of that and some nice fresh Vegetables for our Christmas feast. 

Now, grab a Kleenex, and return to your day knowing how profoundly you are touching other lives.

Oh, and when you brush your teeth before bed tonight?  Appreciate that toothpaste flavor a little more.  I know I will.

Love you all, Linda

The link is open and making magic.

Humble and Kind - The Essence of Yes, Virginia

Each year at this time, as we rally around the virtual Christmas tree, our little village comes together and leaves a mark on so many lives.

I mean that in the best possible way. 

Like a tattoo of love, an emotional imprint is left on the families we manage to touch through Yes, Virginia.

I spent time today elfing for tiny tots, tweens, and then late this afternoon for someone within our community.  That is not history making.  Each year Yes, Virginia delivers smiles across the miles to virtual strangers and our virtual family members here at DGMS.

In my 52 years, I have yet to meet the person who has not needed a helping hand at some point in their lives.  The human experience from birth to death is a roller coaster of joy, sadness, excitement, pain, success, failure, pride and shame, bravery and fear.  The best we can ever hope to do is to remember our own dips when we are excitedly scaling another hill; to remember the uncertainty of what is in the tunnel, the fear of what is around the next bend. 

While I am not a huge country music fan, there is a Tim McGraw song that I adore.  Humble and Kind.  The final lyrics warm my heart and always bring me right to this blogmunity.

Don't take for granted the love this life gives you
When you get where you're goin'
Don't forget turn back around
Help the next one in line
Always stay humble and kind.

Help the next one in line.

The reality is none of us know when we will be the next one in line.   No one asks for suffering, illness, loss.  Yet they visit themselves without regard for whose doorbell they ring.  No one sets out to fall.  No one wakes up in the morning expecting to meet their pillow at the end of the day with the fear of medical what ifs, job loss, fear.

Always mindful that I have to tread a delicate line of privacy with our recipients, while still sharing what I can so you know how your donations help - please know that today you have helped personify those lyrics.  We have helped the next one in line.  Yes, your dollars are buying toys to bring smiles and food to warm tummies, but you are also providing relief, hope, and some peace of mind.

What you do is extraordinary.  Made even more so by the fact that none of us sets out with that word in our minds.  We simply do what we do because somehow, some way - in this nutty place called the internet - the most amazing collection of humble and kind people have built a village.

I cannot thank you enough for every time you have turned back around to help the next one in line.

You matter because you remind other people that they matter.  Now, excuse me, I need a Kleenex. 

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We have two weeks to go and more help to give.  Please donate if you can.  That button on the left of the page is open 24/7.

Baby, It's OLD Outside

As predictable as a red Starbucks cup groundhogging its way into a collective yearly pants shitting, so, too, has popped up the annual argument over Baby, It's Cold Outside.

Only this year, in the shadow of the Me Too hashtag, the song is now actively being banned in places.

As I have received many an email asking for my view on this controversy, I decided to weigh in and say upfront, I do not have a problem with the original version of the song.

But I do see both sides.

Hear me out.

Baby, It's Cold Outside was written back in 1944 by songwriter Frank Loesser.  He wrote it as a ditty he and his wife could sing at parties.  A light, flirtatious crowd pleaser - no harm, no party foul intended.  In fact, for a full year it was their ticket to all the parties.

He sold it to MGM, which in turn used it in the movie Neptune's Daughter - sung by Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban (Yes, of Fantasy Island, rich Corinthian leather, and KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN fame.) and then role reversed and sung later in the movie by Red Skelton and Betty Garrett.  Watch. 

Playful, not scary.  And frankly, when the tables are turned and a woman is singing the "host" role, guffaws galore. 

Context and intent is everything.  The song was written to be fun, a little funny, yes, a bit risque.  (People did actively flirt, make out, and go all the way back then.)  And it included axioms of the time like "What's in this drink?"  No, it did not mean a roofie.  It also was built around the societal conventions surrounding a woman and any level of lust being instantly reciprocated.  (It's actually ultimately empowering for the woman in the song, who holds her own, makes her decision, and stays - which she wanted to do all along.) Think it's not of the time it was written?  Think again.  Or at least tell me when the last time you used a descriptor like "maiden aunt's" or asked for a "comb" for your hair.

Seen through the year in which it was scripted and sung, the song is simply what it was intended. (For the record, Loesser's wife adored singing it so much that when he announced he had sold it to MGM she is on the record as saying, "I felt as betrayed as if I'd caught him in bed with another woman.")

Fast forward through the decades and myriad covers by everyone from Louis Armstrong to Pearl Bailey to Dean Martin to Tom Jones to Lady Antebellum to Lady Gaga, my personal disdain for it is rooted in how many times it gets redone - at least 61 times so far.  And if you looked at the list of artists, there are some very progressive, thoughtful folk who have stepped up to the mic and given it a go.  I promise you, Lady Gaga is not championing date rape.

But now, let's flip the coin to the controversy that it stirs today.

We now live in a time when the hazards long felt by women are no longer being ignored.  "What's in this drink?" is a real question. And being pressured/molested/raped by men is being met with public outcry, firings, loss of careers.  #MeToo is a powerful hashtag, one that I have joined and used as I came forward with my own past of being raped.

I am intensely sensitive to the gauntlet my daughters run, hell, I still run when simply walking down a street.  Culley and I encountered this less than a week ago while shopping downtown Seattle.  Leers, voices, catcalls that culminated with two very loud men commenting on my leather jacket and my booty.  Always aware at how quickly those "compliments" turn into naked aggression when not acknowledged, without missing a step, I twirled, pointed directly at them, tilted my head, completed my circle and kept walking.  As with most bullies, they had zero idea what to do after being acknowledged, and they shut up.  We walked faster.

So I get  it.  I promise.

I also get why Baby, It's Cold Outside, when heard only through the filter of where we are as a society today, is skeevy to so many.  (I loved Friends and Sex & The City - laughed my ass off in their original runs - but now personally find the tonedeafness of how they treated subjects like LGBT issues, etc to be way offputting and I fast forward to the next episode.) 

Yes, if the song were written today, with every NOW connotation, it would deserve the shunning for blatant insensitivity.  But to hear it only through the filter of NOW?  That is selective, and that imbues it with offense that was never written in or intended.

And quite frankly, selective outrage tends to highlight a certain hypocrisy.  If this is BAD, where are the marches, the hashtags, the umbrage against <insert almost any rap song>?

The answer here is actually really simple.  If the song, any song, is triggering, offensive to you, rubs you the wrong way - don't listen to it.  But I would also caution against giving something more power than it deserves.

Baby, It's Cold Outside is OLD outside, inside, all sides.  But what it was never intended by its writer, and the writer's wife was to be an anthem about rape.

Now, excuse me while I enjoy my latte out of this RED, flamey, controversy laden Starbucks holiday cup, because I live in Colorado, and baby, it IS cold outside.

The Content of Contentment

There is a misnomer, rampant among the young and in love, that the absence of drama must mean the proliferation of boredom.

We have all been there.  Young love is lusty, alive, full of first steps, missteps, tears, make-ups, break ups, and more fireworks.  Every day is an adventure. Every misunderstanding a chance for that breathless make up session.

There is a tension, if you will, that keeps things exciting, uncertain.

And we humans love that.    

Yet when a comfort level begins to establish itself; when drama is replaced by the day-to-day; when the flame dies down - we panic.  Addicted to the tension, the passion, the newness - when faced with a lack thereof, we tend to freak out and start believing the love must not be there anymore either.

Not true.

There is a Grand Canyon of difference between contentment and boredom.

I am again airborne, thinking about the past few days spent visiting my oldest and her boyfriend.  And while it goes without saying that I love any chance to spend with her, I must say that hanging out with him, sans her, is proving to be something I look forward to as well.

They are pushing three years now.  Three years that have seen two remarkable young people, having been hurt badly in their pasts, take another chance on love with one another.  Three years in which they have learned as much about themselves as they have one another. Three years in which they have found contentment.

That’s not a small thing for a mom to see.  My children are my life, and having seen one hurt so badly in the past, my radar is extra sensitive for anything that seems amiss.  What my radar picks up in them is happiness.

As for the young man, I liked him from the first time I met him.  Two years ago he secured a bigger place in my heart when he signed up to spend a week in a cruise ship stateroom with Culley, Toby and myself.  THAT is not a small thing, I assure you. And he was game for all of it. We laughed, talked, played, and I was struck by the comfort level I was not only seeing in my child, but the one I was feeling in his presence, too.

And well, Toby is like a dog with new people.  That he liked Sean from the word go? Woof.

The past few days in Seattle were wonderful.  I got to see them both, spend a whole day shopping with Culley, sharing our bad sense of humor, ability to finish each other’s sentences, and just bask in how much I love her.  To say I miss her is a serious understatement.

But my trip there also afforded me time alone with Sean.  He took half a day off to just walk, shop, show me around.  As we walked block after block, I marveled at, or rather, I reveled in, how much I enjoyed just hanging out with him.  Conversation simply flowed, we talked about everything and nothing, he even indulged my spontaneous desire to visit a cat cafe.  

He is a remarkable young man.  Smart, funny, well traveled, sensitive, adventurous, unafraid to indulge his little kid inside, full of forward motion, ambitious, and yes, he loves my daughter.

That’s not hard, mind you.  Yes, she is strikingly beautiful and smart, but he sees so far beyond the surface with her.  He sees what makes her tick, he knows her scars from her past, as she knows his, he sees her growing and changing, as she sees him, and he feels lucky to be in her orbit.

As she feels lucky about being allowed into his.

Today, as we shared some more time without Culley, we talked about their happiness, where they are in their new life in Seattle, and the word contentment.

Drawing on my 28 years of marriage with Rudy - a marriage that has had plenty of drama, tension, ups, downs, and longing - I stressed that it took me a very long time to understand that being content is not anywhere in the same galaxy as being bored.  

Contentment, in its best possible terms, implies great content:  happiness, security, feeling safe, accepted, loved, able to exhale.  No drama required. I told him it is obvious to me.  And to enjoy it.  Trust it.  It is also their course to chart, their road to forge, their choices to make.  No one else’s timetable, no one else’s expectations need apply.

Being young and unafraid of being content is a gift.  One that does not typically visit itself upon their age demographic.  So embrace it.  Wallow in it.

Yes, in any relationship, the two people must also be mindful that certain aspects require work, attention - like a fire, the embers must be tended to keep the flame a possibility.  And no, you won’t always like one another. We’re human beings. Love is a constant, like is fluid. I promise you, Rudy doesn’t always like me, and vice versa - we can both be complete asses - but love is not ever a question.  In fact, the love makes it permissible to be human, to risk being unlikable in the moment.

Again, something it has taken me long years to understand, internalize.  

In many ways, Rudy and I are like newlyweds - only one year into living together, adjusting our very independent lives to accommodate the now constant presence of the other.  But what we have, what we have found in that year, is contentment. Passion doesn’t need drama in order to exist.

I know my children have paid attention to what the years have been like for their father and I.  They know what it is like to see two people in love sacrificing everything for a bigger purpose. They know what hurt looks like.  They understand that even the greatest love can still be subject to fear, hurt, inattention, complacency.

They have also been witness to what it looks like when the biggest risk turns out to be much smaller than the reward.  They know what love looks like. All of it.  The good, the bad, the hard, and the content.

I see it at work in the relationships my children are building in their lives.  The chances they are taking, the pains they are enduring, the people they are choosing to allow into their orbits.  As with the Indiana Jones chalice adventure - they are choosing wisely. Three out of three have people in their lives who deserve to be there, who add, who value them, who make them even better people.

Flying away from Culley and Sean stings.  But I leave knowing they are charting their own course.  Their future is theirs to define, the timetable theirs to dictate.  There is no race to any societal expectation, no need to keep up with the pace of friends past or present.  They are still defining themselves as individuals, writing their own rules on who they are together.

As I fly home, thinking about where they have been before one another, what they survived, and what they have found together, tears fill my eyes in the best possible way.  These two amazing people are happy. They are content.

Which perfectly describes this mom’s heart.