Platitude Schmatitude

This morning I was chasing a certain ill-behaved puppy through the damp leaves (did you read the last post, snakes anyone????), in the dark, with slivers in my flip-flop-clad feet (I have got to get some better Georgia shoes), twigs in my hair (Bodey had to pluck them out for me) and hot coffee spilled down a certain lady-part area.  What a perfect way to start the day!  Good morning, Georgia!  I had a lot on my mind.  I have a poignantly-beautiful daughter who just became a teenager…today..right now.  I have another daughter who isn’t feeling well- I won’t get into what messes I had to clean-up yesterday, I mean, I could but it’s not necessary because you already know.  Then there is Lolo, the puppy.  YOLO, Lolo.  And she’s embracing that philosophy…fully.  Enough said.  The boys are ok at this moment, so we will make today about the girls.   I have to divvy the days up sometimes.  That’s how it is when you are raising a coed basketball team.

And this, this is on my mind, too.  I have a girlfriend who wrote something to me.  Actually, wait!  THREE girlfriends who wrote about the same thing.  Platitudes.  I looked up the precise definition because I wanted to make sure I had it correct.  Yes.  Something, a phrase usually, we say too often and lately it seems it’s to make each other feel better.  A cliche.  And we are all tired of hearing them, of saying them, of hash tagging them, of thinking them, of guilting ourselves with them.  It’s a desperate skirt-smoothing, lipstick reapplying way of making sure our lives and our family and friends’ lives don’t shatter into a million pieces.  “You ok?  Great! I’m fine, too.  You will be stronger for it!  We are so blessed.  Now, don’t spill your drink!”

But what else do I say?  Do I do?  I really have no idea.  I only know I love to listen.  (except to my 4-year-old sometimes because, well, “the days are long and the years are short”, platitude alert, skull-cracking eye roll)  I’m actually an incredible listener, but if you ask how I’m doing I get all sweaty and anxious and strange guffaws come out of me, and then I usually jump up to switch the laundry and it’s all over.

My love of listening is probably what drew me to the world of theatre.  An entire art form dedicated to listening.  If you can’t listen as an actor, you are sunk. But sometimes I forgot and there were many bad scenes, auditions, heck, entire shows I performed in and forgot to listen:  look-at-me-I’m-brilliant-and-radiant-up-here kind of stuff without ever listening to my people standing with me on the stage.  Truly terrible (there were good ones too, though).  That’s another post entirely.  But, now that I’m a big girl, and I’ve shut my eyes and am running through the scary Georgia woods with snakes chasing me, I hear everything.  I hear the frog jump into the pool at 2:30 am. I hear the squirrel jump from that tree I’m looking at right now to that other one so far away, (freaking amazing, squirrel). I hear your heart breaking 20,000 miles away, friend.   I hear your tired text,  I hear your “I’m done” and I hear you putting on your shoes and running.  I’m going to listen to myself and to my people and shut down the platitudes that slip out of my mouth.

A word came to me as I was wiping the dog sh*t off my flip-flops.   It’s just a word, my word to let you know I’m listening and my heart hurts with your heart,  and I hear you and see you and the rabbit hole can fit both of us so move over, girlfriend, and it is in no way related to any platitude I ever said, ever.  And if I feel the desire to let a cliche fall out of my mouth about me or anybody else or any painful situation, then I will just say this:

Platypus.

#platypus

Keep running, darling, the lizards are watching.

xoxoxoxoxo