Do I Really Want to Be A FOO Fighter?

Since my blog yesterday, I have been asking myself, “How is it possible that my son and his father can lie to me (BIG, fat ones), keep secrets from me (BIG, fat ones), and I don’t see? What kind of crazy sleight of hand instruction did I miss? Do I need glasses?”

Those questions have been busy opening my bureau drawers, looking under my mattress, and searching through my closet to find something, anything, that I may have hidden away within myself. I tore through myself with the ferocity of, “I know I put it in here somewhere.”

Well, seek and ye shall find. I found what I was looking for this morning. My 15 year old has been holding a package for me, and, believe it or not, she has been right in front of my face the whole time, standing very straight and tall, patiently holding it out, waiting for me to receive it from her. Through the dust that has accumulated on her gift (well, I told you she's been waiting a long time), I saw that it was a 45 RPM record. I also saw where she had written “FOO” on it. I knew what it meant immediately. Suddenly, the lyrics to that familiar song and her special song title clue brought me right back home.

"FOO." "F.O.O." “Family Of Origin.”

I have always known that there is a very big presence within me, my “Truth Teller.” Now, I have not always (okay, until very recently, NEVER) told truths in a way that allows others to actually hear them and take them in. I have been kind of a “Blurter Truth Teller.” My family function was to consume our family secrets and lies until I felt like I had eaten my third piece of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. Left full to overflowing, I, then, blurted out my truth song. Next, my family completed their part of our duet; they either rested or began playing a completely different tune. Like well-rehearsed musicians, I crescendo-ed in a release of tension just before fatal family injury occurred and, as skillfully as Rachmaninoff, we went directly to our dissident coda and started building the tension all over again.

Now in my current family, I‘m not saying I hold all the responsibility for the secrets and lies, but I can see that the grooves in my part of the FOO harmony are old and deep. I have been co-composing a recognizable re-make of the original with new players.

So I ask myself the question, “Do I really want to be a FOO Fighter?” And my answer is a resounding “No.” Frankly, I’m tired of fighting. However, what I am willing to do is look straight ahead, actually see myself, and accept what is offered to me as something I may (or may not) want to re-orchestrate, re-arrange, or flat out discard as outdated.

For me, it is not so much about seeing other’s sleight of hand tricks anymore. It's about consciously owning my chair in an orchestra whose compositions sing and resonate through me.