In Which Our Heroine Reflects on Being a Mom to Older Kids and Adults In Addition to Going Absolutely Metaphor Crazy

I don’t know…life is hard you guys. It is the day after Labor Day, and the three day weekend was such a roller coaster, I think I have vertigo. Nothing super major happened I guess, but my children are all getting older and I find my role changing. No longer the center of their universe, the sun to their quickly spinning planets, I am earthbound, watching their shooting stars, wishing and praying on them. I cheer on their successes and mourn their failures. Their heartbreak is my heartbreak and their joy mine. But for a control freak like me, it is haaaaaaaaard to be an observer, to move from coach to cheerleader.

I think one of the reasons I’ve been so poor at penning these reflections for the past several years is that as the kids get older, their stories belong to them more than they belong to me, so A) I don’t want to intrude on their privacy and B) I’m still trying to figure out how to write my own story, which has centered around them for so long, but which is starting not to? Geez, that’s weird. But it’s true.

So I cheer them on, I nag them, I pray for them, and I worry about them, and It. Is. Exhausting. I remember telling someone a long time ago (and probably writing about it here) that the toddler years are tiring physically yes, but also mentally and emotionally, because you are trying to model your best self for the little person during every waking hour. Well, it turns out that you, or at least I, also expend a tremendous amount of energy NOT fixing things, trying to listen, or heck, even trying to get them to tell you what’s going on in the first place.*

Which brings us to today, the Tuesday after Labor Day, which is maybe the most Mondayish non-Monday in the history of the world, and I’m weepy and tired and philosophical. But one of the many benefits of my advanced age (not sarcastic here, so far I love being fifty) is that I know what to do when I’m weepy and tired and philosophical. Think about it, write about it, go for a walk, eat some good food and count your blessings. As Internet (and possibly real, what do I know?) Vincent van Gogh said, “It is true there is an ebb and flow, but the sea remains the sea.”

(photo of our inland sea)

*I’m so bad at listening and not fixing that my children now know they need to tell me they just want me to listen, and that they will ask for my advice if they want it. Sigh, more room for improvement for yours truly. Maybe by the time I’m sixty.

Coronadiary: Father’s Day, Every Day

I’m waiting in the car in the parking lot of a suburban strip mall.

I just took off the paper mask and plastic gloves I wore to go inside the medical building and help my 90-year-old father find suite 200, where his eye doctor is located. I used my elbow to call for the elevator and to press “2” for the second floor. The appointment was originally scheduled for March, and has been rescheduled a number of times. His eyesight is bad and getting worse. He can’t really do the crossword in the newspaper by himself any more. Either I enlarge it on the printer – 132% – or one of the kids helps him read the clues. When the libraries shut down, he had to learn how to use the Kindle. He reads thriller after thriller that I check out from the library, in fonts where it’s basically one word per page.

The paper mask is his, but it didn’t fit over his glasses and his hearing aids, so I took off my fabric mask and traded with him. The floral fabric looks ridiculous and magnificent covering his snow white quarantine beard. He’s wearing jeans that are older than my oldest child, a flannel shirt and a navy hoodie. He’s always been the handsomest man I know. He still has a full head of hair – my son is so lucky.

We’re all so lucky. My dad has lived with us for the past six and a half years. He’s smart and funny. He was the only one to guess “Babe Zaharias” correctly last night during “20 Questions.” He’s cautious and frugal and loyal. He’s a hard worker and he likes to be useful. A shy and introverted man, my neighbors all recognize him from his frequent walks with my dog. In fact, when I walk Jessie, they ask worriedly after him. He has outlived all but one of his siblings. He hasn’t seen her since August, but they talk on the phone.

We try to pry details from the past out of him. What was the Depression like? What was World War II like? What was Korea like? He tells us he’s never experienced anything like this.

He’s a man of deep faith. Since the stay-at-home order, he’s been watching daily mass, although he does tend to pick the speedier ones. My three children idolize their grandfather. Year after year, their teachers in grade school read essay after essay enumerating reason after reason why he is a role model for all of us. They were all true.

He misses my mother every single day.

When we walked up the stairs of the office building to the elevator bank, he didn’t put his gloved hand on the handrail, and I held my breath the whole time, worried that he would fall. When I ask him how we should proceed now that the world is opening back up, he says “cautiously.” He couldn’t teach me how to drive stick shift or a balance a checkbook, but he taught me everything else. I worry that he will come back down from the appointment and tell me that the doctor wants to operate on his eyes. I worry that he will come back and say there’s nothing they can do and that he’s going blind.

We play cards together. He’s the best card player in the house, but it’s getting hard for him to see which number and which suit has been played. I bought new playing cards on Amazon that have giant numbers and suits. I buy a new, better magnifying glass. I want to buy more time.

Sunny Side Up

Well, the Great American Eclipse of 2017 is over, and I hope everyone’s eyeballs lived to peep another day. We didn’t have totality here in Batsville. I did have several friends who traveled to parts south to see the total eclipse (cue the Bonnie Tyler, and just when you thought you’d ejected that particular earworm!), and others on Facebook who said that seeing the Full Monty, so to speak, was really spectacular, and an item to put on your bucket list. (Argentina 2019! Who’s with me!)

Here in Milwaukee, we knew we would have about 84% coverage. Just 16% or so of the sun would be visible. I wondered what that was going to look like. 16% isn’t very much. If your chances are 16%, you don’t have good chances. A 16% grade would be a disaster for most people. If, say, your spouse eats 84% of the ice cream, leaving you only 16%, you might be pretty irritated. All of which is to say that with 84% of the sun obscured by the moon, and only 16% visible, I was sure it would get noticeably dark outside. Like, at the very least, we’d be able to tell that there was an eclipse going on.

As it turned out, I had to work on Monday, and I didn’t have eclipse glasses, and it was overcast, and frankly Eclipse 2017 was shaping up to be kind of a disappointment, but then a wonderful colleague had the foresight (ha!) to bring eclipse glasses, and we were able to sneak off outside, and miraculously the clouds parted just enough to see. Several of us took turns looking through the glasses (wow, have things come a long way since the pinhole viewer – good job, science!) up at the sky, at the SUN, and it was beautiful, and amazing, and so super cool.

And I’ve been mulling over this thought since Monday. Plenty of people up here thought the eclipse was a big yawn, or really, didn’t even notice it was happening. And yes, it was cloudy, and yes, most people aren’t capital N nerds like me, but I don’t think either reason is really why. I think it’s because just 16% of the sun is so powerful, it still felt like a regular day. Even though 84% to 16% are terrible odds, that 16% is still enough to win.

Did you get that? Light wins. Bet on light. Be on light’s side. Darkness doesn’t stand a chance, no matter how good it looks on paper.

Light wins! And just a little bit is all you need. If you have any light at all, it’s not actually dark anymore. So even when it seems dark, even when the odds seem stacked against you, remember that all you need is just a little light. Shine on, friends. Shine on.

It’s in the (Hockey) Bag

Valentine’s Day, 2016

Dear Moose,

Your playdown game will start in just under 3 hours. I know your whole team is both excited and nervous for this important game against Fond du Lac. If you win, you’re headed to State! If not, well, everyone will be disappointed.

And that’s ok! It’s ok to be sad when you don’t win. I’m so proud of what a good sport you’ve become. I can remember making you return the game ball when you were a Bull in PeeWees. (Believe me, I cried just as much as you did…you just didn’t see me). But learning to be a good sport and handle defeat was a crucial lesson to learn, and you have learned it. I am so, so, so proud of you.

 

Which brings me to the point of this letter. Of course I hope you win. Of course I hope I get to watch Squirt Silver play in the State tournament. This has been an amazing season of hockey, and it has been an absolute joy to see you grow in your knowledge and love of the game. But no matter what happens, nothing can take away from this great season. No result today can make this be a less awesome group of kids, coaches and families. You will always carry the memory of this season with you. I will too.

 

When we were in law school, Daddy and I had a professor named Girardeau Spann. He was a wonderful teacher, probably my favorite at Georgetown. In his class, there was one test for the whole semester. Your whole grade was based on that one test. We were all terrified before taking it. But here’s what Professor Spann said, in just about his exact words: “Listen, if you are a turkey before you take this test, you will be a turkey afterwards, no matter what your grade is. And if you are a good person, you’ll still be a good person, even if you fail.” His point was that even though it would be absolutely devastating to get an F in Constitutional Law, it wouldn’t affect who you were on the inside. Henry, this game won’t either. You are a loving, compassionate, considerate, smart, hard-working, funny and talented 10-year-old. I love you with my whole heart, and I thank my lucky stars every single day that I get to be your mom.

 

Play hard, have fun, don’t get hurt. Go Silver.

love always,
Mom

Taking out the Trash, Ash Wednesday Edition

“Do you like Lent?” my nine-year-old asked me this morning.

“Yes, I do,” I answered, and anticipating the inevitable ‘why,’ I continued. “I like it because it’s a time of year where it’s a little easier to focus on being a good person,” but he was already at the table with a mouthful of bagel and his eyes on the sports section.

My blog posting is testimony to the fact that I like Lent. One blog post a year, whether I need it or not! But I do like Lent. It’s not that I’m a particularly somber person I don’t think, but I like the exercise of stripping away the extraneous and focusing on the essentials. It’s the same reason I love going to the kids’ school masses, and doing children’s liturgy on Sundays. I like going back to basics.

A good friend of mine said to me today that she likes Lent way more than New Year’s resolutions. I know just what she means. Lent is a little like spiritual trash collection. You bustle around, getting your spiritual house ready for Easter and the Resurrection. This year, some friends of mine and I are going to try to declutter our homes as a part of our Lenten fasts. “40 bags in 40 days.” (I can probably come up with that just out of my basement). But as tough as it’s going to be to declutter my house – you should SEE my basement – it’s even harder to declutter my mind. To get rid of all of the things don’t serve me…fear, and pride, and anger, and judgment, and criticism, among innumerable others…Maybe I should try to get rid of 40 negative feelings in 40 days. 40 bad habits in 40 days? 40 sins in 40 days! Sigh. There’s a lot of room for improvement, but I have this community that helps me, and at the end of Lent, I’ll have so much space for love, and compassion, and kindness.

Meanwhile, I’m going to go tackle the coat closet. Happy Ash Wednesday, and a good Lent to you.

I Have Psoriasis and Why You Should Care

I received an unpleasant diagnosis yesterday. Not a terrible one, and not a particularly scary one, but a real, uncurable, and frankly, kind of icky one. I have psoriasis, which is thought to be an auto-immune disorder of the skin. A real, live disease – golly! (You know that expression “God only gives you as much as you can handle?” I’ve often thought how lucky I am that God knows I am a serious wimp).

I’ve only been googling “psoriasis” nonstop for the past 24 hours, so I’m far from an expert, but here’s what I do know. I have raised red patches all over my torso, with some on my arms and legs. Some of them are scaly and sort of grayish. Some are blob-like and some are more dot-like. They don’t hurt or itch and the vast majority are covered up by my clothes, so I’d say I’m pretty lucky. I’m trying not to be too down about it, as in the grand scheme of things – brain cancer, starvation, war – this is pretty minor, but I’m terribly vain, and I have an ugly rash. So that sucks.

I’m still figuring out what my plan of action is for treating it. There are drugs I can take and creams I can use, and maybe I will eventually, but I don’t want to yet. There are other options, crunchier, alternative type things, and those are more my speed, so I’ll explore those first. (At first I told Sam that if this mystery rash didn’t go away I was going to connect the dots and tattoo constellations on my torso…at this point it would be more of a supernova, but who knows, maybe I’ll still do it).

Anyway, here’s why I’m writing about what would otherwise be a pretty private and kind of embarrassing subject. It dovetails with something I’ve been thinking about for a while now.

The Internet is awesome. Look how much I learned about psoriasis in one afternoon! Social media can be too. I’m in touch with family and friends all over the world on Facebook. Hundreds of people wished me a happy birthday on May 29. I play Scrabble every day with my brother who lives five hours away. I hear about new jobs, new puppies and new babies almost instantly. I can feed my real estate/decorating addiction endlessly on Pinterest, scroll through beautiful pictures on Instagram and get a quick laugh at my favorite celebrities’ Twitter feeds. I’m fairly plugged in, and I’m fine with that.

But it’s only part of the story. It occurred to me the other day that you rarely see someone posting, “Told my eleven-year-old to shut up today” as their status update. No one tweets “Man, hemorrhoids suck!”*** So picturesque vacation pictures, yes. Lousy parenting moments, not so much. Selfies with celebrities, for sure. Gross medical conditions, no way. I scroll through my news feed, and it’s like that Lego movie song: “Everything is awesome!” which is great, but not true. Not for anyone. I am lucky beyond belief…in my family, in my friends, in where and how I get to live and in what I get to do, but you know what? The most perfect-seeming life has darkness in it. Everyone, everywhere, is battling something. Like fucking psoriasis.

What’s my point? I dunno. I don’t want to tell anyone what to do, unless it’s my kids, and I mostly want them to figure it out on their own too. But for me, I need to hear about people’s triumphs AND their struggles. I ordered a print that says “I will not compare myself to strangers on the Internet” because it’s insidious, comparing yourself to people’s carefully presented public personas. I don’t want to envy other people, I want to be grateful for what I have. But sometimes when all you’re seeing is the highlight reel, it’s hard. My sports nut son likes to watch the highlights of last night’s game when his team wins. And when his team loses, he’ll tell me that he’s watching the lowlights. I think it’s important to talk about both. So, you know, now you know.

***Those are totally hypothetical examples. Unless they aren’t.

 

Ujjayi Breath and the Burden of Being Human

My breath is ragged and uneven, here a grunt and there a gasp. My mind wanders, to grocery lists and carpools, to doctors’ appointments and dinner plans, but I reign it back in, and try, for the umpteenth time, to smooth out my exhalation, to lengthen my inhalation…to yoke my breath to my movement to my brain. I’m at yoga, and I can hear the ujjayi breath of the men and women around me. Breath with sound…it is even, ineluctable. It washes over me like the waves of the ocean. I close my eyes, even though I’m not supposed to, and bathe in the sound. I can’t add to it. If the combined breath of the men and women in that room is the Atlantic Ocean, mine is a little creek, so insignificant it dries up in the summer, so unimportant it’s short i, not long e.

My mind wanders again, but this time to the words of the gospel I heard yesterday at mass.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

I heard the same gospel at a funeral a few weeks ago. “The yoke doesn’t seem easy or light,” said the priest. “It only becomes that way because we share the burden together.” I held onto that thought as I choked my way through the familiar prayers and hymns, adding my voice thick with tears to the rest of the congregation’s. “There is nothing I can say or do,” I thought. “But I am here, with these people, saying these words and singing these songs. It is nothing, but it is all I can do. Maybe it is enough.”

And so I join my little creek to the ocean of sound as I move through my yoga practice. In and out, labored and burdened, but shared. What I have, I will add to the room. What I can, I will give.

Cultivating Joy

Last fall, Lucy and I planted 200 tulip bulbs. Tulips are my very favorite flower, and have been since at least high school, which may be the longest I’ve ever gone without changing my mind about something. It was a sunny September day with a bite in the air, and we knelt down in the mud and clay, dug 200 holes, filled them with bone meal, carefully set in the bulbs, and covered them up with earth. As the season wore on, the weather turned cold, and then very cold. The leaves changed and fell. We raked enormous piles that the kids jumped in, and we raked some more. It snowed, and we danced for the sheer joy of it. Then it snowed and snowed and snowed, and when it snowed at the beginning of April, we almost cried. It truly felt as if spring might never come. We wondered how many of the tulips would come up, if any. Would they become dinner for hungry squirrels and chipmunks? Were they frozen to death under the ground? Had we done it right? Had they survived? I think any gardener will tell you that planting something is an act of faith, and hope. I think all gardeners have to be a little bit of optimists in their hearts. So we waited. And waited and waited and waited.

And then, obstinately, defiantly, those tulips forced their way up. The snow wasn’t even gone yet, there was still ice on the lake, and we still bundled up in hats and scarves as we walked past those stubborn tulips. We checked on them every day, measuring their progress, watching them grow from green little fingers in the ground to suspiciously tulip-shaped leaves on suspiciously tulip-shaped plants. They haven’t bloomed yet, and there might not be 200 of them, but they’re there, growing and changing from something that looked dead to something that is not only alive, but beautiful.

Today is Easter. What was dead is alive. Where there was sadness, there is now great joy. It’s warm enough for me to sit on my porch with my laptop, after having gone for the very first family bike ride of the season. We went to the Easter Vigil last night, the Easter Bunny hid a nice amount of eggs in the backyard this morning which the kids found at the crack of dawn and we ate too much ham and drank too much champagne at lunch. It has been a happy day. But now we need to keep it up. As our pastor said, we need to celebrate Easter for an entire season. In fact, we Catholics are supposed to be an Easter people, a people of joy all year long. We’re supposed to be optimists and hopeful and believers, and joy-spreaders. Gardeners, so to speak. That’s hard sometimes. I think I might be better at Lent. I’m good at rules, and I’m probably a little too good at sad, and introspection, and deserts. But I did plant those tulips…I bet I can get better at cultivating joy.

A very, very happy Easter from the Belfry to wherever you are.

Dialing Down the Crazy…a True Story of Ash Wednesday, Yoga and Gilbert & Sullivan

Aaaaaaaand it’s Ash Wednesday again – my blogiversary, and the beginning of perhaps my favorite church season, Lent. I was sort of stumped on what to write about, to tell you the truth, but determined to think of something since Ash Wednesday is evidently THE ONLY day I won’t let pass without a blog post, and phew! here it is. My annual post.

So at yoga, you can set an intention before you begin your practice. For me anyway, it makes my work on the mat a physical expression of prayer, like the dervishes, or the Shakers, except with incense and lycra. I often go through my mental Rolodex of friends and family before class or my own private practice, offering up my effort for the people I love best. (It’s interesting how it works…the two seem to dovetail until the person I’m praying for and the practice mirror or match each other. A while ago, I set one of my dearest friends who was going through a tough time as my intention, and the yoga was hard. Or I set my youngest child who radiates light as my intention, and the yoga was easy).

Anyway. I escaped to class last night by bribing my husband to take our son to violin, and getting take-out burgers for dinner. Before class began, I was thinking about who to pray for, and my oldest daughter popped into my head. I have some people on my list who ostensibly need prayin’ a whole lot more than she does, but thinking of her working on her book report at the dining table as I dashed through on my way out the door made me smile, so I offered up the class for her. For Riley, I said, closing my eyes and smiling as I stood at the top of my mat.

As class began, my teacher said we would work on backbends (boo!) and reminded us not to let our minds boss us around. Well, I’m paraphrasing, but her point was that while we need to respect and be compassionate toward our bodies and their limits, sometimes our brains put the brakes on way before they need to…and that frequently we are capable of more than we give ourselves credit for. She also pointed out that backbending, which is considered to aid the nervous system, can be intense, and can open you up to a lot of emotion.

If you know my daughter, a lot of that will seem pretty pertinent. And if you don’t, you can take my word for it. She’s nervous, she’s intense, she’s emotional, and she has a fiercely big brain which frankly, gives her a lot of guff.

That’s all very nice, you say, and kind of a cool coincidence, but what about Ash Wednesday? Patience, grasshopper. I’m coming to that part.

So my darling daughter has a problem with overreacting to things. Falling apart because she asked the wrong person for Fiddling Fernando in Go Fish for example, or exploding because her brother is being poky tying his shoes again. Actually, to be truthful, it’s us that have the problem with her overreacting. I don’t know. I think sometimes her gauge of what’s reasonable just needs to be rejiggered. We had a great conversation about it the other day, and we came up with the idea that I could just shoot a codeword at her, and then she’d know that maybe she was at DEFCON 1, when really 5 was all that was called for. and maybe that would pull her back from the emotional cliff.

And here’s where Gilbert & Sullivan come in. I got the idea from Ruddigore, a G&S operetta I was in in grad school. I played a character named Mad Margaret who is unhinged by lost love when you meet her in the first act, but who is (mostly) cured when she is eventually reunited with her soulmate, Sir Despard. Mags has the terrific idea that when she veers off course into CrazyTown, Sir Despard can pull her back by saying only “Basingstoke,” the name of a real town in England. I don’t know whether it’s crazy or not. I’ve never been. But anyway Riley and I now have our own version of “Basingstoke,” and I won’t tell you what it is, because that would defeat the whole purpose of the codeword.

And NOW I sew this all up together with Lent. I realized during yoga last night, mid-backbend, that Lent is our Basingstoke. Life is so bananas, batshit crazy most of the time for all of us that we LIVE on the edge of the cliff…but every year Lent rolls around again saying “Basingstoke!” which really means “yes, your schedule wants to eat you alive, and your children make demands on you and your parents need you and you’re neglecting friends and you’ve only gone to yoga a couple of times since your New Year’s resolution to go all the time, and you’ve blown several obligations and you didn’t see a single movie in the theater in the whole of last year, and you’re drinking too much and you’re eating crap and you gossip and you don’t have faith, but take a minute. In fact, take 57,600 minutes -that’s how many minutes there are in the 40 days of Lent – and do these three things: Pray. Fast. Give alms. Or put it another way if that’s too churchy for you: Reflect. Streamline. Love more.”

So this Ash Wednesday, that’s what I’ve got for you: Basingstoke. And maybe more yoga.

Where Joy Resides

My oldest child is in another professional play. She’s having a good season, it must be said. She had just finished one play when she started rehearsals for the next gig. Like seriously, the very next day. And she’s been spending HOURS downtown at rehearsal. My life, for the next two months, is chaffeusing. (I made that word up, I’m very proud of it, and I like how it sounds way more than what it means). In fact, our communal schedule is so bananas, we gave her a phone. And yes, the fact that I am now the kind of parent who gives a ten-year-old (almost eleven) a phone is horrifying. In fairness, it’s not hers to keep, it’s just so that when I drop her off in front of the theater, double-parked in heavy traffic with the blinkers on, my throat hoarse from cursing the other drivers on the way downtown, she can run out and text me from the fourth floor, “Hey Mommy” – she still calls me ‘mommy,’ the darling, darling girl – “I made it. I’m safe. I’ll see you at 9.” Actually, her first morning with the phone she texted me three times, saying “Mommy, I love you so so so much.” Frankly, I don’t know why we didn’t give her one ages ago. I need the affirmation.

Cover girl

Anyway. Yesterday the director and the children’s director and the stage managers were kind enough to meet with the clueless parents to try to explain the mysteries of producing a show. I had 82 questions about how to read the call sheet, explaining who is expected at rehearsal when. If Riley isn’t cast there again, I’m sure it will be my fault. “The kid is great, but that mom is pretty dim – I have serious concerns about the gene pool…” I appreciated the director’s honesty as he explained that while he hopes that the kids have a good experience, it isn’t his paramount goal…that putting on the very best production they can is of primary importance. And then he thanked us. HE thanked US…for letting them have our kids, and for driving, and for shifting schedules and all the rest. He has a two-year-old, he said, so he isn’t there yet, but he recognizes how difficult the demands of the show will be. It was a nice gesture, but here’s what I would have said if I hadn’t been on my best behavior.

“Are you effing kidding me? Listen, your kid is two, so you’re stuck playing with Little People and watching Backyardigans and running around trying to make sure she doesn’t kill herself, so you don’t know this yet, but let me tell you something. Watching your kid discover what she loves is one of the most magnificent experiences a parent can have. Seeing her be good at that thing is sublime. And if she has success at that thing that she loves and is good at? That is one of the most profound joys you can have, I think. At least it is for me.

My daughter has come home from rehearsal every day glowing. Seriously, she is glowing, like an alien or an angel. Her happiness wells up from her toes and explodes out of her mouth in happy chatter all the way home. She is delirious to go to rehearsal and disappointed when she doesn’t. And this magic is not just stagecraft. She’s so happy and confident, she’s doing things she’s never done before, like scoring goals in soccer, and walking home by herself from the store. She even likes school a little bit now, which hasn’t been the case since kindergarten. So thank you. Thank YOU. Thank you for the opportunity, and for recognizing the pure gold from which my daughter’s heart is fashioned. You have excellent taste, and I promise, she’s way smarter than I am.”

Pearl S. Buck said that “Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.” I think sometimes in this parenting business we fail to see that. Family life is challenging and growing pains hurt, duh. The minutia of day-to-day life can be pretty soul-sucking. So I am so freaking grateful for this tsunami of joy that has entered our household. I’m gonna dive in and enjoy the ride.

“And, the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action.” Robert Louis Stevenson