green, green grass

The blog distresses me.

Perhaps I should say, the prospect of this blog, all the things I could write, all the people I could possibly offend, all the things I could regret revealing…all the infinite numbers of potentialities and ramifications that could…maybe…happen. These things distress me.

My husband’s mother and stepfather were here from Texas this weekend, and every time we are all together, we end up retelling great stories together, the ones that really make us laugh. It feels like dropping the needle on an old record player into the well worn groove of a favorite track. So this trip, one afternoon as we were sitting around our kitchen table, my kids remembered an especially funny incident involving Bryan’s oldest sister, Julie. Back in the days before seat belts (and this is fascinating to my children, they can’t imagine such a world), my mother in law was driving with Julie and went around a corner, when, much to their surprise, the car door flew open and out Julie went. Luckily, the car was going fairly slowly, and they were next to a nice green lawn – so all Julie hit was some grass.

Bryan’s mom says that Julie, true to form, was standing up, hands on hips, before she was even able to stop the car and get out. Completely indignant, she yelled, “Why did you do that to me!?” And, of course, she’s never let her mother forget about it…

This is one of those stories that is funnier every time you hear it – especially with Bryan’s family adding new punchlines every time. So we were laughing, the kids think that story is hilarious, and so do I. Then, out of the blue, Bryan says, “If that had happened to Sarabeth, she would have rolled on to the grass and then wanted to know, ‘What did I do?’ ”

I haven’t shaken off that comment yet.

He didn’t mean anything by it – it was just one of those moments when someone sums up…I don’t know, your personality, your very own warped world view, your particular woundedness…? Whatever – it’s that moment when someone else hits that place in you that you really thought nobody ever saw with such accuracy, such deadly aim, that it takes your breath away.

Because that is who I am. I assume guilt.

But even that is putting it a bit too nobly – what it is really is an attempt to control what other people think of me, to make them like me even if it means being willing to stifle or apologize just to keep them near. It’s what keeps me from doing something as small as posting to a blog.

So maybe it’s not the blog that distresses me after all…