I really did look like Barbie Hannah, as my mom labeled it, this weekend for the wedding. That airbrush makeup and darkened eyebrows and false lashes really did make me look… well, flawless, yet slightly fake. I am definitely not accustomed to relating to these photos I am seeing as photos of myself…
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… at last. I had a bigger bed and company the last several nights, staying with one of my best friends and her family. It was wonderful.
And yet, my body can hardly contain its joy at being in my own bed, small as it may be, with my own smells and my own vibes to rest and recuperate after so much these past couple weeks and this past weekend.
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And tomorrow, one of my best friends gets married.
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Exhausted, feeling slightly ill, I roll onto the bed. It is so very late, and there has been so much action today, my mind, body, and spirit are all practically brimming with tears. They need rest. They need the door shut. They need the fresh air and lack of stimulation.
And so, we shall sleep… hopefully, very well.
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You know…, I might just actually really like those smutty romance novels after all…
Not that I hold them as high royalty among novels – nothing like that. But so far as storytelling goes, some of the smutty ones are spectacularly told…, even if they might be 80% smut… Because, I believe, smut told well is worth hearing… and, if for nothing else, then for spectacular ideas…
But the good ones actually have great stories to go with them – fairy tale fantasy and smutty fantasy all in one. š
However, Iām not sure yet. Iā going to do some research on the top-rated romance novels, and give them a go, see how I feel about them. Iāve mostly only read stories that have unexpected smut strewn throughout their stories, stories that focus around something else, with the smut only as a tiny piece here and there. So, we shall see…
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O-o-o-oh, sometimes, it causes me to tremble…, tremble… tremble…
Perhaps one of the most powerful expressions of sadness and pain – an expression that communicates clearly to and elicits reaction from onlookers – is the unexpected tremble of the lips.
That powerful, easy, comfortable part of the body, somehow losing its ability just to hang out, hang around… it takes no effort for our lips just to exist. Perhaps that is what makes that tremble so powerful, so effecting… our pain is so great, that not even our effortless body parts can remain calm, they shake with the volume of such pain.
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Today, I got to hear a recording of my mom when she was 15, turning 16. It was a tape recording of a phone call for fathersā day, and her birthday was going to be the following day. The recording started with my Opa, her father, talking to his father. He then handed the phone off to my grandma, who sounded a lot like my mom sounds. Then my two uncles went on, in age order, and then my mom. I cried, and so did my mom, when she started speaking. I somehow felt myself wanting to give that little girl a hug…
I had never heard her voice other than how it had sounded in my lifetime. I had heard people mention that she had gone off to college (at Rice), and had come home sounding all snooty (versus the strong southeast Texas accent of where sheād grown up and where my grandparents remained, even after their children had grown up and moved out). To me, my mom has always sounded like the regular Houston accent. Whenever she is with her family, she always ends up talking just like they do. However, she otherwise speaks with the extremely neutral Houston accent. (Truly, even US Americans find it hard to believe that Houstonians are from the South, because we really just donāt sound like it. Only our use of āyāallā makes it clear that we are southern.)
However, on the recording today, I heard a bright-eyed, teenage, southeast Texas girl speak with delight. I almost couldnāt hear my mom in her at all. She most certainly was southern and from southeast Texas, but I was shocked at how little she sounded like my mom.
On the second listen, though – it was only a minute or so that she was on the call – I began to find her in the girl. The way she spoke, and the intonations, the cadence and emotion – those were all clearly my mom. But that accent and voice… I could tell she was a lifetime away, unaware of what life would bring her beyond age 16 and a driver license after her drive training over the next couple weeks…
It was bizarre, but I would love to hear more from her. The tape had a whole section of her and my aunt, who is younger, singing the songs from Godspell (my uncle was in the musical back then), and I really heard my mom there, in the singing. That was super cute.
Anyway, I am wiped, and on multiple levels, so Iāll go attempt sleep, now. (Itās set to 79Ā° in here, because my grandma doesnāt have the body structure and function to keep the body heated anymore. Apparently, she even uses a heated blanket to keep warm enough overnight… with the 79Ā° air…) Weāll see what happens…
Post-a-day 2021
This has been a week of compliments for me. First, the perfection butt. Then, my singing and song-writing…., a few times. At a restaurant tonight – we went for margaritas, not for food -, as I was walking back to the table from the bathroom, a waitress said something to me. I thought that I must have misunderstood, so I replied with a few blinks, a frown of confusion, and a, āWhat was that?ā She then repeated herself.
I had not misunderstood.
She had said, and this was not our waitress, but one I hadnāt seen until this point, āWoah…, your body is awesome.ā
I thanked her, and continued my way back to the table, contemplating my many responses to the situation.
I ended on gratitude and excitement and encouragement. š
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At the gym today, someone asked me what I had noticed as the biggest difference from having been at the gym for so long. I immediately thought of my muscles, the obvious strength in my shoulders and arms – a strength I love to see whenever I pass a mirror -, my near constant touching of my own muscles, the shape alteration of my hips and waist and thighs, the lines (as we call it) on my leg muscles… but those all seem like small things to me, and none stands out as significantly more prominent in my mind than the rest. Perhaps it is my energy levels or my endurance capabilities. Or perhaps it is how I no longer just feel comfortable in my own skin, but I feel capable in it…, ready to take on anything, bidden or not…
I really wasnāt sure, and I thought on it for quite a while this afternoon and evening. However, when I was preparing to take a shower, I went to take a look at my body. Naked and tired from having been worked hard this afternoon at the gym – I felt like fighting someone, so I went to the gym, even though I had planned to go tomorrow instead of today – it stood its ground nonetheless. What stood before me looked nothing like a tired body. Truly, what came to mind when I saw it was simply the word, āwomanā. It was woman as she was designed to be. It was the young hunter-gatherer of a clan from so many years and generations ago, when we first became the ingenious homo sapien sapien. It was Ayla from The Earthās Children book series.
And I realized that that was the greatest difference I had noticed in myself since joining the gym. When I see my naked body now, I do not frown at the shape, nor find sorrow in the excess fat areas. I see simply woman, and I am both grateful and proud to be the host of that woman. I have worked long and hard, and I shall continue to do so, because it feels not just good but right to be this woman. This is part of who Iām meant and made to be. And I am grateful.
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I just want to call him and talk about the stars and the planets in the night sky… I want to ask him for a detail on a story… I want to be the source of that crinkling smile again…
But that isnāt how things work.
And thatās okay.
And itās perfect, too.
(Iām not saying I wonāt cry an ocean-full over the next while, but even that is perfect and okay.)
I truly am the product of both of my maternal grandparents. My grandmother gave me the social aspect in life, the physical intimacy of her always patting a leg, rubbing a back, or indulging in deep, long hugs. My Opa, he gave me the ability and desire to step away from the action, and go do my own thing; to be not touched; to be comfortably contemplative on my own while the others gather loudly; to think deeply and analytically about…, well, about just about everything. He gave me the goofy, nerdy humor, and she gave me the sharp sass. He gave me the comfort in grunge attire, and she gave me the casual desire to out-dress expectations. I am both extremely picky and totally open to trying new things. I am artistically and musically inclined and am an utter nerd for knowledge. I want to save everything, yet have little around the house. I love with my words, but also with my actions and unspoken acceptance. The list could go on and on and on, I am sure… I know it could, and it could do so easily…. I am that much a perfect mix between the two of them.
Yes, I have my own pieces all throughout it all. Of course, I do.
However, it is unabashedly clear that I come from the two of them. We are of the same thread, and they helped to create me, as I became my own piece of the work.
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hannah ananas 