Sunny Side UP!

My parents didn’t want me to leave home–ever.

 

I was their “sparkler”–their weird, unfathomable optimist … their cheery valentine.

 

I was their Pollyanna. They never told an off-color joke in front of me until I was middle-aged. Mom even castigated me for returning from Hollywood with the f word in tow during one of my vacations north.  She was appalled, and said so, so I stopped using it until after she died.  (These days I only use it sparingly–my nod to her good sense and in a worthy attempt to recapture my earlier sensibilities where “colorful metaphors” are concerned.)

 

I was their dreamer…their proactive dreamer. I was going to be a writer, no matter how impossible that career appeared to be to them (and me!) back then…so I wrote endlessly, ceaselessly. It drove my dad crazy, because he wasn’t even a reader.

 

I never gave Mom and Dad any trouble other than being a dynamo–a warp-speed worker–because I preferred writing to anything else they wanted me to do and the only way to get back to writing was to “get ‘er done” in the fastest, most efficient way possible.  Dad said I should never be an hourly wage earner because I ran circles around every other worker he ever knew. His thought (paraphrased) was, “Since there’s no meritocracy these days, be a contract worker to be sure you get what you’re worth.” (He never suggested self-employment. Women were not business owners back then.)

 

Nevertheless, my folks were pretty sure I’d fall flat on my ass because no one would agree to pay me what I was actually worth in any company.  I was a designated female. (I’m not female; that’s just my physical configuration, whether by nature or via surgery while still an infant. But that’s another story, which I’ve titled Womb Man:Growing Up In a Booby-Trapped Body. It will be out later this year.)

 

So although I have always had plenty of reason to be depressed–even suicidal–my nature is to survive anyway–to push it all away using humor, to focus on the many ways in which the world and I are doing just fine despite our various challenges. My closest friends have always considered me a laugh riot. My ability to ponder words from every conceivable angle gives rise to comments that appear to arrive out of left field until the connection is made in listeners’ minds, and then they exclaim, “That’s brilliant! How do you do that?!”

 

I don’t know. I just pay perilously-close attention to words and recognize their various meanings and associations, so juxtapositions occur to me in the same way that jokes occur to comedians: they just happen spontaneously.  I wish I could think of an example right now, but I can’t. Next time it happens I’ll try to remember it and put it here so you have an example. (Lisa says I do it all the time.  Unless we’re talking about something serious, I usually manage to put her in stitches, which frequently surprises me! It certainly isn’t planned or orchestrated; it’s just the way my brain works.)

 

So I’m going to do my best, from now on, to come to you from this space–with my sunny side up –the side that keeps me keepin’ on despite challenges and setbacks. Because one thing I don’t need–and you don’t need–is another curmudgeon.  I’m resigning from the Ain’t It Awful Club and taking my marching orders from Philippians 4:8 (New International Version):

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.“

I will expand the above list to “whatever is funny, positive, friendly, accepting, kind, nurturing, compassionate”… whatever emotion or activity or report raises the vibration level of the soul to the love vibration is where I want to exist.  The only separation I seek is separation from discord, hatred, fear, misuse, abuse, casual common callousness and dark despair.

 

To this end, I will play my part to dispel darkness and to shine glorious light on what feels best at its essence

 

Because I know one thing for sure: Whatever humans have broken can be fixed.

 

Yes, it will require unity of spirit and clarity of cause but it is fixable.  I’ll leave the details to the newest adults among us who will inherit and operate what comes next, and their progeny. My emphasis will be on mirroring my mentor DeForest Kelley, not Jon Stewart or Mark Twain (as much as I admire these humorists, past and present).  I don’t want to be as deeply impacted by persistent pessimism as Bill Maher or George Carlin. (I just can’t imagine them ever truly happy–can you?)

 

I think De was intelligent and happy. I strive to be intelligent and happy.

 

I want to exude grace (unmerited favor) the way De did. I want to love the way De did.  He was a true spiritual champion. I don’t want to wander farther away: I want to return to that. I was there once before: I marinated in it. I can get there again. I know it.

 

I am dedicating 2017 to the effort.