E. surprised me for our 13th anniversary with a trip to Portland. Thinking we were, I don't know, twenty-three or something, we drove seven hours on Friday, stayed in a posh hotel over night, walked around Portland for a few hours the next morning, and drove back. It was exhausting. Lovely. Exhausting.
On the way home we were hauling ass up a steep, winding, four-lane highway pass; around one curve was a red sedan, flipped upside down, wheels still spinning, bodies stiffly circling a car, something suspended upside-down from the roof. "Is someone still in there?" I asked Eric. "Should we stop?"
He said no, there were other people already pulled over to help, but I wasn't really asking a question anyway, and we pulled over. There were four women who had been in the car--a fifteen-year-old and her mom, two older ladies, aunties. A couple of other motorists had pulled whoever was still suspended in the car out. There were magazines strewn about the roof of the car; snacks; the contents of purses. It looked like the aftermath of a wild party, the floor of a messy dorm room.
Everyone was fine, mostly. The two aunties, stout, purses hung off their forearms, lips in tight lines and hair unmussed, seemed as if they had just strolled up. They were totally unfazed and it was hard to believe they had been in the car at all.
The mom, who had been driving, had blood pouring down her face from a puncture wound to her forehead, but she was still standing and seemed otherwise okay. She was shaking pretty bad, her eyes wide, and she kept saying, "I could have killed my whole family. I could have killed them all." She was clearly in shock and I just stood there and rubbed her back, tried to convince her to sit down, worried that maybe she was hurt worse than she seemed.
Someone else had a first aid kit and gloves on already, and kept asking me if I wanted gloves on too. I wasn't touching the blood or anything so I ignored them and finally got the woman seated on the rocky embankment. Cars were still flying up the hill, going so fast, then braking suddenly to look at us, and the road was wet from the rain that had just come through. E. said he couldn't believe how bald the woman's tires were, and that he was worried the whole time we would get hit by someone else who lost control.
One of the aunties said they had been on their way to a family reunion in LaGrange. The woman who had been driving said her brother had told her it was time to get a new car, but the car would be finally paid off in three months, so she had told her brother she had decided to drive the car into the ground. Then she paused. "I could have killed my whole family," she repeated. She grabbed her daughter and hugged her so tight and said, "I'm so sorry baby. I'm so sorry."
Ambulances from the nearby Indian reservation were on the way, and everyone seemed fine, and there were plenty of motorists on the side of the road now. Cars kept whizzing past us, and it became clear that we were more in the way than not. So I hugged the lady again, told her and her family I was so glad they were alive and okay, and we left.
I remember fifteen years ago when my then-boyfriend Pete and I drove from LA up to Boise so he could meet my family. On that trip, too, we passed a wreck, this time on a pretty deserted stretch of road in Northern California. There was a van, formerly full of people, pulled off to the side of the road, but facing the wrong way, its front end bashed in, windows collapsed; there was a big, overturned truck in the field next to it. Pete was an EMT, so we pulled off immediately to see if we could help the other motorists who had pulled over ahead of us.
There were bodies in the field. People had located them and then were coming back to us, their faces grim. A kid, in his late teens or early twenties, too, was seated by the side of the road, by himself. His brother, also young, was still strapped into the driver's seat, not moving. Pete was looking the driver over, and again all I could do was rub the kid's back, tell him it would be okay. He kept asking about his brother. Pete and I made eye contact and he shook his head. Somebody told him he was an EMT and needed to call it. He had just got out of training and hadn't done anything like this before, so he spent a few more minutes going over the driver again, standing still and quiet, feeling for a pulse, breath sounds. Then he shook his head a final time.
The kid, rocking now, eyes locked on the front of the van, told me he and his brother and the other passengers were on holiday from Australia. He didn't know what had happened to cause the accident. He kept asking about his brother, saying he needed to call his parents, and all I could say was, "Everything's going to be alright. It's alright." I lied, and hated lying, and didn't know what else to do. I tried to calculate the time difference between California and Australia, tried to imagine who would be responsible for making that call, what news would be given.
Eventually the cops and the fire truck came and we didn't need to be there anymore. We got back in the truck and left.
I felt the same way in both situations, as I got back in the car and sped off. Not lucky, not reminded of how it can all be over in a minute, not wanting to be more careful. Just shaky and filled with a sense of the strange, the uncanny. The weirdness of how you can be part of such a significant moment in someone's life, a moment where maybe their life is changed forever, and also be so totally outside of it, so useless, so extraneous. And then you can get in your car and drive away, untouched, never knowing anything about those people again.
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
The Spiritual Douche
Okay, so before I begin the heart of this post, let me just put a little disclaimer here about the word "douche." Because if you know me in person, you know that I'm sort of fond of swearing, and that the pejorative "douchebag" is in heavy lexical rotation (along with the douchebag's primary mode of transport, the "douche canoe," which is usually an oversized, over-equipped, heavily-stickered vehicle).
I know N. wants me to replace "douchebag" with "dick sock" and M. wants me to not say it at all, I think because it reinforces the sense that women's bodies and fluids and processes are icky/gross/disgusting and that's not great for feminism.
I'm a big fat feminist, so I get it. I'm thinking about not saying it anymore, even though I feel ambivalent because sometimes that word is just the right thing to say about certain people. And sometimes I don't like word policing, though sometimes I do.
But this post is about reclaiming the word "douche" as something positive, in all of its wet feminine stickiness, so hang in with me for un momentito.
I don't know if it's that my girlfriends and I are finally mostly in our forties, and it's introspection time, or maybe this is one of those seasons in one's life where you look around and wonder, what the hell, or maybe you feel a little bored or in a slump and the color has gone out of things. Whatever it is, I've been talking with a bunch of women lately who are feeling maybe like they've lost a sense of who they are. They'll tell me that things are kind of good. But they also feel a little like a slog. Sometimes things feel a little blah, even when on paper it seems everything is okay.
The culture seems to call these moments "mid-life crises," which for me conjures up images of balding dudes in porsches with young blonde dental assistant second wives. Maybe the stereotypical version for women is dating a younger man, a la Stella Got Her Groove Back. In actuality, probably the intense and massive consumption of wine on the part of middle-class women is a response, too. I think a lot of us are numbing out.
But maybe there is a different way.
Maybe that way could be called the Spiritual Douche.
The Spiritual Douche, in my world, looks like intentionally making choices or adopting practices that put you back in charge of your life. I think we spend a lot of our 30s getting things on auto-pilot, as we're raising kids and getting our careers going, and we're just trying to survive. And then in our 40s the auto-pilot gets a little...dull. We forget that we have choices. We forget that we can, as Anna Kunnecke puts it, "declare dominion" over our day to day existence.
Holy shit, have I been there.
But here's the thing. We can decide, through steps big and small, to get renewed, baptized, cleansed, "douched," remade, rejuvenated, in ways that bring the color back into our lives. There are lots of ways to change how we think about responsibilities and obligations and duties. There are lots of ways to, whoosh, start over.
For me, the Spiritual Douche takes a couple of different forms.
I know N. wants me to replace "douchebag" with "dick sock" and M. wants me to not say it at all, I think because it reinforces the sense that women's bodies and fluids and processes are icky/gross/disgusting and that's not great for feminism.
I'm a big fat feminist, so I get it. I'm thinking about not saying it anymore, even though I feel ambivalent because sometimes that word is just the right thing to say about certain people. And sometimes I don't like word policing, though sometimes I do.
But this post is about reclaiming the word "douche" as something positive, in all of its wet feminine stickiness, so hang in with me for un momentito.
I don't know if it's that my girlfriends and I are finally mostly in our forties, and it's introspection time, or maybe this is one of those seasons in one's life where you look around and wonder, what the hell, or maybe you feel a little bored or in a slump and the color has gone out of things. Whatever it is, I've been talking with a bunch of women lately who are feeling maybe like they've lost a sense of who they are. They'll tell me that things are kind of good. But they also feel a little like a slog. Sometimes things feel a little blah, even when on paper it seems everything is okay.
The culture seems to call these moments "mid-life crises," which for me conjures up images of balding dudes in porsches with young blonde dental assistant second wives. Maybe the stereotypical version for women is dating a younger man, a la Stella Got Her Groove Back. In actuality, probably the intense and massive consumption of wine on the part of middle-class women is a response, too. I think a lot of us are numbing out.
But maybe there is a different way.
Maybe that way could be called the Spiritual Douche.
The Spiritual Douche, in my world, looks like intentionally making choices or adopting practices that put you back in charge of your life. I think we spend a lot of our 30s getting things on auto-pilot, as we're raising kids and getting our careers going, and we're just trying to survive. And then in our 40s the auto-pilot gets a little...dull. We forget that we have choices. We forget that we can, as Anna Kunnecke puts it, "declare dominion" over our day to day existence.
Holy shit, have I been there.
But here's the thing. We can decide, through steps big and small, to get renewed, baptized, cleansed, "douched," remade, rejuvenated, in ways that bring the color back into our lives. There are lots of ways to change how we think about responsibilities and obligations and duties. There are lots of ways to, whoosh, start over.
For me, the Spiritual Douche takes a couple of different forms.
- It has meant renegotiating my relationships to the objects in my world, largely with the help of this amazing free program. I can't overestimate how awesome this has been for me. It has helped me in so many areas, from how I live in my home, to how I dress, to how I spend money, to how I spend my time. Next time it rolls around, sign up. You won't regret it.
- You could also read this little book and try some of the stuff in there, or this big, beautiful book, which is about style but also so much more, and has provided me with tons of clarity.
- It means making sure I spend time with the people I love in intentional ways and in beautiful, natural settings. It means finding a way to move your body outside with people or animals you love. I have a few groups of friends who I have to fly or drive long distances to see. Money is tight, but we all make the effort to get together. We hike or swim or bike together. We drink. We work. We talk. We laugh. The effort is always, always worth it. I come home to my family in much better shape, always. Find your tribe, and then do what you need to do to be with them. Whatever rules you have in place that say you can't leave home or work, look hard at those rules. You're probably the only one who is really enforcing them. As Jenny Holzer says, "You are a victim of the rules you live by." That's a quote from this book, which you could also read, if you wanted to change your shit up.
- Natural settings, by the way, are key. Because nature itself is the master douche-meister. She will clear you out, in all the best ways. Get out and hug a tree (for reals). Lay on the ground and "look at the cwouds," as my 2-year-old niece would say. Go barefoot. Get into a park, go to the beach, grow some basil in your windowsill. I cannot tell you what a difference this makes in terms of getting clear. It only takes five minutes, and you can do it in any outdoor setting available to you.
- It means making different decisions about how I spend my time. I work really hard. I sometimes work long hours. I have projects I feel passionate about and some degree of clarity and success in my work life. I have kids, and a husband, and I try to move my body every day. But I also have erred sorely on the side of workaholism and anxiety and stress. I have had times where my to do list has ruled my life. I have had times where things have been profoundly out of whack, and I have made myself sick. But guess what? There are other ways of doing things. And they don't have to be big! I used to worry that I should be like those people in the women's magazines who left their day jobs and started a custom tampon delivery company and are now millionaires. I just don't have the appetite for doing that. But there are daily micro-practices I can easily implement that profoundly improve my life. Try The Break Changer, if you want another amazing, fun, free program. If it works for you, you can try the month-long one. My money is on you being amazed at how making small changes can make a big difference.
- It means meditating. Which I know, you're like, whatever. Yadda yadda. But Christ on a crutch, it really effing works. Here's a free 21-day program to try, which runs about four times a year and is fantastic. Get the app. You have to suspend your cynicism about who runs it, if you are a cynical type. I have been a cynical type, though, and let me tell you, it didn't get me very far. Cynicism is the easy way out, if you ask me. The Spiritual Douche asks you to be willing to try some stuff you aren't used to trying, suspend your disbelief, and be willing to laugh at yourself and experiment.
- In other words, it means trying different stuff, and really questioning your excuses. Most of the things I linked to above are free or humanly-priced programs. Most don't require much time or skill. And you don't have to do all of them. These are just ones that have worked for me and been fun, and haven't set off cheesy alarm bells, and have really fucking improved my life, for cheap.
I guess my point is that things don't have to feel dull. Things don't have to feel like a slog. We can choose something else. We can pay better attention. We can choose to flush what doesn't work and make room for better things.
And I think when we move small things, big things also start to shift. I don't know why, and maybe it's magic, but that is how it seems to be. So start small. Try one thing. See what happens.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Trailer Park Honeymon
We all know we're supposed to write thank you cards, and my mom even gave me 300 of them, along with my gift list from my wedding. I kept meaning to write them, and meaning to write them and after 2 years, I thought, "Now, it's probably just rude to send them."
I know I was wrong, it just seemed to get away from me, and I was too embarrassed to correct it. I thought maybe if I didn't send any thank yous, people would assume I already had. Forgive my asinine rudeness.
As my 20th anniversary approaches, (we're at 18). I plan to rectify that mistake, I even plan to chronicle it in blog posts to come. Consider this the first in the series.
We definitely didn't have an exotic honeymoon. We weren't even going to take one at all. Josh and I got married at 20 and 19 respectively. We were both living at home with our parents, but we had put a down payment on a house the April before our wedding, and were figuring out mortgage payments, saving to replace carpet, stripping paint from kitchen cabinets, and with our plan to avoid debt, there looked like no possible way for us to miss our paychecks for a week, let alone spring for a tropical beach.
When my grandmother heard we weren't planning on taking a honeymoon, she came to me and said, "Angela, how much do you and Josh make in a week?" I told her, and she explained that as a wedding present, she would pay Josh and I what we would have made, if we agreed to take the week after our wedding off, and spend it in our family cabin. I started to argue, and she said, "Either way you're going to have to pay for groceries for the week, you might as well spend some time alone together." I was touched and we took her up on her offer.
I should explain that our family "cabin" was really an ancient single wide trailer, on a lot with other trailers and cabins just off the highway in the mountains. My grandparents, people who lived simply their entire lives, saved for this little "place" in the woods. There was a large deck all the way around it, covered with hummingbird feeders, and sparkling and iridescent garden decor. My grandmother had decorated the inside and kept it immaculate. In the back was a bedroom large enough for a double bed, the next room was a tiny bathroom, then kitchen, then living room. The entire thing was probably 25 feet long by 8 feet wide. My family and I loved going there growing up, and the prospect of any vacation sounded amazing to Josh and me.
That week we marveled at the humming birds coming to eat from my grandmother's feeders. We read Silence of the Lambs aloud to each other, naked in bed. We watched The English Patient, and dined on extravagant dinners of Kraft Deluxe Mac n Cheese. We draink Ice Reisling wine my mom had given us to toast our marriage, because we weren't old enough to pick out or purchase our own alcohol, and Josh held my hair as I threw up that wine and Mac n Cheese. I screamed at the frogs that came up through the pipes in the toilet and bathtub, and Josh laughed at me. We made love on picnic blankets in the woods. It was a glorious, glorious honeymoon. I wouldn't change one single thing about it. We hardly left that cabin all week.
We didn't need an exotic locale, or tropical beaches, or fancy drinks with umbrellas, we needed the pure, unadulterated bliss of being alone together, drinking each other in, celebrating this life we were about to embark on, and getting to know each other in ways we never thought possible.
We needed to look deeply into each other's eyes, we needed to be together without distractions.
I'm so grateful, that instead of the beauty of some place, I was gifted with the beauty of my husband. I was gifted with the magic of what we can be together, and when our marriage is hard, and I'm struggling, I go back to that week, and it helps me hold on.
Thank you Grandma Leola for our gift.
I know I was wrong, it just seemed to get away from me, and I was too embarrassed to correct it. I thought maybe if I didn't send any thank yous, people would assume I already had. Forgive my asinine rudeness.
As my 20th anniversary approaches, (we're at 18). I plan to rectify that mistake, I even plan to chronicle it in blog posts to come. Consider this the first in the series.
We definitely didn't have an exotic honeymoon. We weren't even going to take one at all. Josh and I got married at 20 and 19 respectively. We were both living at home with our parents, but we had put a down payment on a house the April before our wedding, and were figuring out mortgage payments, saving to replace carpet, stripping paint from kitchen cabinets, and with our plan to avoid debt, there looked like no possible way for us to miss our paychecks for a week, let alone spring for a tropical beach.
When my grandmother heard we weren't planning on taking a honeymoon, she came to me and said, "Angela, how much do you and Josh make in a week?" I told her, and she explained that as a wedding present, she would pay Josh and I what we would have made, if we agreed to take the week after our wedding off, and spend it in our family cabin. I started to argue, and she said, "Either way you're going to have to pay for groceries for the week, you might as well spend some time alone together." I was touched and we took her up on her offer.
I should explain that our family "cabin" was really an ancient single wide trailer, on a lot with other trailers and cabins just off the highway in the mountains. My grandparents, people who lived simply their entire lives, saved for this little "place" in the woods. There was a large deck all the way around it, covered with hummingbird feeders, and sparkling and iridescent garden decor. My grandmother had decorated the inside and kept it immaculate. In the back was a bedroom large enough for a double bed, the next room was a tiny bathroom, then kitchen, then living room. The entire thing was probably 25 feet long by 8 feet wide. My family and I loved going there growing up, and the prospect of any vacation sounded amazing to Josh and me.
That week we marveled at the humming birds coming to eat from my grandmother's feeders. We read Silence of the Lambs aloud to each other, naked in bed. We watched The English Patient, and dined on extravagant dinners of Kraft Deluxe Mac n Cheese. We draink Ice Reisling wine my mom had given us to toast our marriage, because we weren't old enough to pick out or purchase our own alcohol, and Josh held my hair as I threw up that wine and Mac n Cheese. I screamed at the frogs that came up through the pipes in the toilet and bathtub, and Josh laughed at me. We made love on picnic blankets in the woods. It was a glorious, glorious honeymoon. I wouldn't change one single thing about it. We hardly left that cabin all week.
We didn't need an exotic locale, or tropical beaches, or fancy drinks with umbrellas, we needed the pure, unadulterated bliss of being alone together, drinking each other in, celebrating this life we were about to embark on, and getting to know each other in ways we never thought possible.
We needed to look deeply into each other's eyes, we needed to be together without distractions.
I'm so grateful, that instead of the beauty of some place, I was gifted with the beauty of my husband. I was gifted with the magic of what we can be together, and when our marriage is hard, and I'm struggling, I go back to that week, and it helps me hold on.
Thank you Grandma Leola for our gift.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
The Laaaaast Womaaaaan on Eaaaarth!!!
Oh you guys. I haven't shown up here in a long while, on the blog.
Because I've been writing two books.
At the same time.
And they are both due to the publishers any minute.
I've been spending almost all of my work hours hunched over my computer making sentences, fixing them, fixing them again, checking references, looking things up, feeling all squinchy and focused. I get home from the office and am barely able to form sentences. My children seem like aliens, my husband a stranger. It takes me an hour just to resume human form, to reconnect to a life lived off the page.
I feel like I am in a dark cave. It's cozy in here, and deeply fulfilling--even joyful--in a lot of ways. I'm proud of myself, and my co-authors, and the work. But really I am in here by myself, in the dark, until these things are done. Mornings: coffee, work out, sit butt in chair, write. And at the end of the day, all I have energy for is to take the dogs for a walk, watch an episode of Mad Men, and pass out into the deepest sleeps I've ever had.
Occasionally I take a peek at what you guys are doing on Facebook and notice that big, important things are happening, and also sweet, small things, and then I quickly close the browser because my brain cannot even be in that space right now. There is no bandwidth left for imagining what other people are doing, or commiserating, or connecting, or keeping up. I know it's summer and I know we have taken trips and will take more, and that we have friends, and interests, and that something called "boredom" exists somewhere, and that someday life will resume, but I can't remember anything other than sitting in front of this screen, and I can't imagine anything beyond it, either.
It's possible I'll come out of the cave and you'll all be gone. The whole world will have been a dream, and the only real thing the words I tapped, tapped, tapped out on this laptop. I'll be the last woman standing, and all that will be left for me to read is my own two books.
Lord, I hope not. I hope you'll all remember who I am when I come back. Please keep an eye out for me.
So I haven't been writing here, because I've been writing there. I've used up all my words. And I'm not living any interesting stories to tell, anyway.
But I'll come back. I'm almost done.
Look out.
Because I've been writing two books.
At the same time.
And they are both due to the publishers any minute.
I've been spending almost all of my work hours hunched over my computer making sentences, fixing them, fixing them again, checking references, looking things up, feeling all squinchy and focused. I get home from the office and am barely able to form sentences. My children seem like aliens, my husband a stranger. It takes me an hour just to resume human form, to reconnect to a life lived off the page.
I feel like I am in a dark cave. It's cozy in here, and deeply fulfilling--even joyful--in a lot of ways. I'm proud of myself, and my co-authors, and the work. But really I am in here by myself, in the dark, until these things are done. Mornings: coffee, work out, sit butt in chair, write. And at the end of the day, all I have energy for is to take the dogs for a walk, watch an episode of Mad Men, and pass out into the deepest sleeps I've ever had.
Occasionally I take a peek at what you guys are doing on Facebook and notice that big, important things are happening, and also sweet, small things, and then I quickly close the browser because my brain cannot even be in that space right now. There is no bandwidth left for imagining what other people are doing, or commiserating, or connecting, or keeping up. I know it's summer and I know we have taken trips and will take more, and that we have friends, and interests, and that something called "boredom" exists somewhere, and that someday life will resume, but I can't remember anything other than sitting in front of this screen, and I can't imagine anything beyond it, either.
It's possible I'll come out of the cave and you'll all be gone. The whole world will have been a dream, and the only real thing the words I tapped, tapped, tapped out on this laptop. I'll be the last woman standing, and all that will be left for me to read is my own two books.
Lord, I hope not. I hope you'll all remember who I am when I come back. Please keep an eye out for me.
So I haven't been writing here, because I've been writing there. I've used up all my words. And I'm not living any interesting stories to tell, anyway.
But I'll come back. I'm almost done.
Look out.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
How To Ruin Your Child's Best Day
Yelling is bad. I know this.
Two days ago, Grace was sitting at the breakfast counter in the kitchen after school. She said, "Oh Mom, last week on Thursday when I was home sick. I got an IB award. Mr. _______ gave it to me today."
I kind of knew what an IB award was. I knew that the school gave out these "I see IB" acknowledgements when they caught kids having behaviors consistent with the school's desired attitudes and attributes. You know, stuff like, "You were really open minded when you listened to that other point of view".
I asked her "Which teacher gave you the award?" Mildly annoyed, she curtly replied, "All of them." I said, "Oh. What attribute was it for?" Completely exasperated, she snipped, "ALL OF THEM." My response, "So... this award is from all the teachers? and for -" She interrupts, "Yes, Mom." with a, for crying out loud, how slow can you possibly be, tone. This was the fly that landed on my crap pile of a day. A day in which I had a fruitless two hour conversation with an unsatisfied client, a day where, because the business was down two employees, I had to turn down multiple clients, a day where Josh wasn't coming home until 8 or 9 pm, after a 14 hour work day, a day where I was stressed out about completing all the end of school year projects, just days away, a moment where, I was trying to make dinner, help another child with their homework and direct children on animal care. And I snapped.
I started screaming about how I was a loving parent, who just happened to be interested in what was going on in her life, and that I didn't deserve to be treated like that (shit), and that I already had been treated like that (shit) by multiple strangers that I didn't love. (Yes, I said, "shit"), and on, and on I went in my self serving, I'm justified way.
Then she went upstairs and cried. Then I yelled at all three of them about how I had to clean up all their messes, then Grace said kindly "Mom, should you take some time to cool down?", then I yelled "I AM COOLED DOWN!", then I yelled at Grace, "I'M SORRY I YELLED AT YOU. I LOVE YOU VERY MUCH!!" then she cried, then I nastily said, "Now you feel justified" because I knew my yelling was wrong, and I knew she knew my yelling was wrong, but I still felt justified, then she said, "No I don't. You have no idea how I feel", then I realized, I was not justified, I was an asshole, and I said, "You're absolutely right. I'm sorry"
I went outside breathed in the fresh air, took a moment, felt my shame, and walked back into the house renewed. I got down on my knees in front of Grace on the couch, and I said, with love and repentance, "I am so sorry I did that. You did not deserve me yelling at you, and I'm sorry I ruined your good news. I love you so much, and I'm not one bit surprised that you got that award, you're an amazing kid." She said she needed a minute and went upstairs.
When she came down we talked it out more. I did more apologizing, we talked about her award, and how good she felt when she got it, and how wonderful and amazing she is, and I apologized to the boys. We had a beautiful dinner, where all four of us laughed and listened to each other, and all of us were happy and healthy, and hopefully healed.
At the end of the night, I was reflecting on this episode. There was a time when I would have gone to bed unable to sleep because of the shame, but that night I thought, "The only way to go from here is forward. I made amends, now I can learn from this."
I learned that I am going to have at least 10 more years of her exasperated with my inability to understand her. As she grows in her autonomy, and figures out who she is, I plan to react to her with patience, empathy and love in the future, and not take it personally. I learned that my children now know how to make amends to their children when they do parenting wrong because I have given them a great example. I learned that my children are getting great practice in forgiveness, because they so readily forgive me, and that is a gift. I learned that I really suck as a parent sometimes, sometimes I'm amazing at it, overall I'm real, and I can look at that as a gift to them, too.
Two days ago, Grace was sitting at the breakfast counter in the kitchen after school. She said, "Oh Mom, last week on Thursday when I was home sick. I got an IB award. Mr. _______ gave it to me today."
I kind of knew what an IB award was. I knew that the school gave out these "I see IB" acknowledgements when they caught kids having behaviors consistent with the school's desired attitudes and attributes. You know, stuff like, "You were really open minded when you listened to that other point of view".
I asked her "Which teacher gave you the award?" Mildly annoyed, she curtly replied, "All of them." I said, "Oh. What attribute was it for?" Completely exasperated, she snipped, "ALL OF THEM." My response, "So... this award is from all the teachers? and for -" She interrupts, "Yes, Mom." with a, for crying out loud, how slow can you possibly be, tone. This was the fly that landed on my crap pile of a day. A day in which I had a fruitless two hour conversation with an unsatisfied client, a day where, because the business was down two employees, I had to turn down multiple clients, a day where Josh wasn't coming home until 8 or 9 pm, after a 14 hour work day, a day where I was stressed out about completing all the end of school year projects, just days away, a moment where, I was trying to make dinner, help another child with their homework and direct children on animal care. And I snapped.
I started screaming about how I was a loving parent, who just happened to be interested in what was going on in her life, and that I didn't deserve to be treated like that (shit), and that I already had been treated like that (shit) by multiple strangers that I didn't love. (Yes, I said, "shit"), and on, and on I went in my self serving, I'm justified way.
Then she went upstairs and cried. Then I yelled at all three of them about how I had to clean up all their messes, then Grace said kindly "Mom, should you take some time to cool down?", then I yelled "I AM COOLED DOWN!", then I yelled at Grace, "I'M SORRY I YELLED AT YOU. I LOVE YOU VERY MUCH!!" then she cried, then I nastily said, "Now you feel justified" because I knew my yelling was wrong, and I knew she knew my yelling was wrong, but I still felt justified, then she said, "No I don't. You have no idea how I feel", then I realized, I was not justified, I was an asshole, and I said, "You're absolutely right. I'm sorry"
I went outside breathed in the fresh air, took a moment, felt my shame, and walked back into the house renewed. I got down on my knees in front of Grace on the couch, and I said, with love and repentance, "I am so sorry I did that. You did not deserve me yelling at you, and I'm sorry I ruined your good news. I love you so much, and I'm not one bit surprised that you got that award, you're an amazing kid." She said she needed a minute and went upstairs.
When she came down we talked it out more. I did more apologizing, we talked about her award, and how good she felt when she got it, and how wonderful and amazing she is, and I apologized to the boys. We had a beautiful dinner, where all four of us laughed and listened to each other, and all of us were happy and healthy, and hopefully healed.
At the end of the night, I was reflecting on this episode. There was a time when I would have gone to bed unable to sleep because of the shame, but that night I thought, "The only way to go from here is forward. I made amends, now I can learn from this."
I learned that I am going to have at least 10 more years of her exasperated with my inability to understand her. As she grows in her autonomy, and figures out who she is, I plan to react to her with patience, empathy and love in the future, and not take it personally. I learned that my children now know how to make amends to their children when they do parenting wrong because I have given them a great example. I learned that my children are getting great practice in forgiveness, because they so readily forgive me, and that is a gift. I learned that I really suck as a parent sometimes, sometimes I'm amazing at it, overall I'm real, and I can look at that as a gift to them, too.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Empathy, Desparation, and Love
Late the other night, I had to pick my parents up from the airport. After I dropped them off, I was alone with the radio. Moments like these are rare in my life. I was listening to the BBC broadcast on NPR. I rarely ever hear this broadcast because by the time it's on I'm either scrambling to get our family of five ready for the next day, or trying to grab a moment alone with Josh, or sleeping. As I listened, I heard this story, about the BBC's attempt after World War II to find the families of specific holocaust survivors.
I heard the story of a mother of three girls. Two of her children were chosen to live, and before her eyes, one of her children was chosen to die. This mother held on to that child, despite her horrific fate. She fought men certainly bigger and stronger than herself with a desperation that I hope never to feel, but can sadly imagine. As a result of her choice to hold on to her 9 year old daughter for dear life, this mother was sentenced to the same fate as her daughter. She knew that to love meant to fight for her child despite the cost to herself.
I can't remember the last time I had such an emotional reaction to a story. It's not that I've never been moved by a story of the holocaust. Of course I have, but the reality of this story, my role as a mother, and the proximity in age of my own children to the children in this story, sent waves of despair over me. I despaired for this mother and her choice. I despaired for the children she left behind, I despaired for the fear, and torment of the 9 year old girl.
In general, I want to be in control, and as a parent, on more than one occasion I have thought, "No one could ever take them from me. I would never let any harm come to them. I would run, I would fight, it wouldn't be possible." While listening to this broadcast, it struck me, really struck me for the first time, that it is possible. There is evil big enough to rip children from their mothers, to pull them from their siblings.
I couldn't sleep thinking about what kind of person could look into a mother's eyes, so desperate with the kind of love people will die for, and take her child. I couldn't sleep thinking about how there was no way, I or anyone could make up for this act, and the horrendous acts of so many others. You see, I have a fixing problem. I always want to fix things, and I agonized over my inability to make this right. Then it dawned on me, that I may not be able to fix this, but I could work, hobble together the steps to prevent these things in the future. You see, the future sleeps under my roof. The future eats my food, snuggles in my bed, asks me for advice. The future looks to me for answers everyday.
I can teach my children that there are no real differences between people. That their job is to love. That God is love, and that in order to know what's right, they have to look no further than the love between a parent and their child. A love which I hope they feel in abundance.
And I will do my best. I cannot right the wrongs of the past. I cannot heal the wounds of a people. I cannot erase the cruelty of generations, but I can do my best, everyday, to raise up people who see the value of the love between a mother and her child, and who would never violate that love despite the cost to themselves.
I heard the story of a mother of three girls. Two of her children were chosen to live, and before her eyes, one of her children was chosen to die. This mother held on to that child, despite her horrific fate. She fought men certainly bigger and stronger than herself with a desperation that I hope never to feel, but can sadly imagine. As a result of her choice to hold on to her 9 year old daughter for dear life, this mother was sentenced to the same fate as her daughter. She knew that to love meant to fight for her child despite the cost to herself.
I can't remember the last time I had such an emotional reaction to a story. It's not that I've never been moved by a story of the holocaust. Of course I have, but the reality of this story, my role as a mother, and the proximity in age of my own children to the children in this story, sent waves of despair over me. I despaired for this mother and her choice. I despaired for the children she left behind, I despaired for the fear, and torment of the 9 year old girl.
In general, I want to be in control, and as a parent, on more than one occasion I have thought, "No one could ever take them from me. I would never let any harm come to them. I would run, I would fight, it wouldn't be possible." While listening to this broadcast, it struck me, really struck me for the first time, that it is possible. There is evil big enough to rip children from their mothers, to pull them from their siblings.
I couldn't sleep thinking about what kind of person could look into a mother's eyes, so desperate with the kind of love people will die for, and take her child. I couldn't sleep thinking about how there was no way, I or anyone could make up for this act, and the horrendous acts of so many others. You see, I have a fixing problem. I always want to fix things, and I agonized over my inability to make this right. Then it dawned on me, that I may not be able to fix this, but I could work, hobble together the steps to prevent these things in the future. You see, the future sleeps under my roof. The future eats my food, snuggles in my bed, asks me for advice. The future looks to me for answers everyday.
I can teach my children that there are no real differences between people. That their job is to love. That God is love, and that in order to know what's right, they have to look no further than the love between a parent and their child. A love which I hope they feel in abundance.
And I will do my best. I cannot right the wrongs of the past. I cannot heal the wounds of a people. I cannot erase the cruelty of generations, but I can do my best, everyday, to raise up people who see the value of the love between a mother and her child, and who would never violate that love despite the cost to themselves.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
A Little Dark
There are days where I just totally freak out. We get a letter saying our taxes were under-assessed and our mortgage payment is going to go up by twice the raise I just received and, Jesus, how are we going to pay for that now that E. is going back to school full time and not working anymore. And I look around and think we have not had much good news, financially, for a long time now. I wonder what the hell. I have worked pretty dang hard for a long time now and shouldn't things be easier. Why are we so cursed.
The negativity comes in waves: My grandmother died on the floor by herself, and maybe suffered for a good long time. I sometimes imagine her body on the floor, and wonder if I should have gone up to see it before the coroner got to the house. I wonder if it says something about my character that I didn't.
I am sick again at the end of the semester, horrible sick, stomach flu and respiratory sick. I hear judge-y voices in my head who say this is my fault for working too much and not resting enough. I tell them to buzz off because sometimes you just catch a freaking virus, okay?
Sometimes I get really lonely for my girlfriends, for the women who know me and all my fears and fuck-ups and who don't need a bunch of back-story and who come and drag me out of my house and take me places.
The kitchen needs work and the house needs painting and the fence should be replaced. The big dog's anti-seizure medicine costs $80 a month and the little dog has a weird itch on his back but I don't want to take him to the vet for fear he'll need Botox injections or something that will send us off some financial cliff. Or, God, it's another tumor and he's going to die.
Sometimes I'm plagued with doubts about having moved us here. Every time the girls have troubles or E. falters on his way towards reinvention or we get a bill I didn't expect or I have a bad day at work, there is a little voice that says, see, you should have stayed. Who do you think you are.
The pain feels extra painful. The dark extra dark. And the crutches I used to use--the drinking, the buying, the eating--they just aren't as interesting or useful anymore.
But here's the thing. The dark is extra dark but also the light is extra light. I walk down the street here with a stupid goofy grin on my face because while I am not always happy I am frequently full of joy. The colors feel brighter and my days don't whiz by in a creepy blur and I'm interested in my life. The smallest things--riding the cruiser around town, cheering at Nolie's soccer game, drinking coffee in the sun--fill me with intense pleasure.
That sounds crazy.
What I mean is that I think living with a whole lot more uncertainty (but maybe also less fear) makes me feel more alive. We were rich when we lived in Colorado but I think I spent a lot of time feeling dead inside. I guess we were living with uncertainty, too, but I had surrounded myself with a pretty thick layer of routine and numbing and security.
If the bad can't get in, though, the good can't either.
This has not been an easy lesson to learn. I really dislike discomfort and pain and sadness and embarrassment and shame and failure. Here they are in my face a lot. It's like every day is a mother fucking adventure in what-the-hell-is-going-to-happen-now.
Everyday is a mother fucking adventure.
That doesn't sound so bad.
I don't know what I'm going to get from one day to the next, or how I will handle it, or what kinds of grace or mercy I'm going to need next. That feels a lot like being alive.
Martha Beck says this:
"Emotional discomfort, when accepted, rises, crests, and falls in a series of waves. Each wave washes parts of us away and deposits treasures we never imagined. No one would call it easy, but the rhythm of emotional pain that we learn to tolerate is natural, constructive, and expansive. It’s different from unwilling suffering the way the sting of disinfectant is different from the sting of decay; the pain leaves you healthier than it found you."
Maybe all this is just me getting healthy.
Here's the other thing. I'm pretty sure I believed strongly in "meritocracy" as life philosophy. I believed if you were good, people would be good back, and if you did everything right and paid your bills and showed up and checked the boxes, good things would happen to you.
Cheryl Strayed, who doesn't believe in God but to me is a beautiful incarnation of God herself, writes in Tiny Beautiful Things, "To use our individual good or bad luck as a litmus test to determine whether or not God exists constructs an illogical dichotomy that reduces our capacity for true compassion.... It fails to acknowledge that the other half of rising--the very half that makes rising necessary--is having first been nailed to the cross."
I'm not saying I'm Jesus here, of course. Or that our challenges have even been that bad, in relative terms. I am saying that I have spent a whole lot of time trying to prevent bad things from happening to me by being good, believing that if something bad happened it was because I was not good enough.
But no. The darkness is not your punishment. It is your friend. The dark things are what lead you to the light. The cross is what leads you to redemption.
The flipside of trying to always do "right" is I feel like I spent most of my life barreling through to-do lists, forcing things to happen by sheer force of will without even being sure I actually wanted them to happen. There was so much supposed to happening there. I'm not talking about morality; I still think we strive to be our best selves, whenever possible, and to not hurt others, and to be kind and loving. But for a long time I was being someone else's version of that best self.
That is a lifetime of conditioning that needs undoing, because shoulds and supposed to's are dulling mechanisms. Figuring out what you actually want, apart from what you think you should do, is much more interesting. And radical. And terrifying. And good.
The negativity comes in waves: My grandmother died on the floor by herself, and maybe suffered for a good long time. I sometimes imagine her body on the floor, and wonder if I should have gone up to see it before the coroner got to the house. I wonder if it says something about my character that I didn't.
I am sick again at the end of the semester, horrible sick, stomach flu and respiratory sick. I hear judge-y voices in my head who say this is my fault for working too much and not resting enough. I tell them to buzz off because sometimes you just catch a freaking virus, okay?
Sometimes I get really lonely for my girlfriends, for the women who know me and all my fears and fuck-ups and who don't need a bunch of back-story and who come and drag me out of my house and take me places.
The kitchen needs work and the house needs painting and the fence should be replaced. The big dog's anti-seizure medicine costs $80 a month and the little dog has a weird itch on his back but I don't want to take him to the vet for fear he'll need Botox injections or something that will send us off some financial cliff. Or, God, it's another tumor and he's going to die.
Sometimes I'm plagued with doubts about having moved us here. Every time the girls have troubles or E. falters on his way towards reinvention or we get a bill I didn't expect or I have a bad day at work, there is a little voice that says, see, you should have stayed. Who do you think you are.
The pain feels extra painful. The dark extra dark. And the crutches I used to use--the drinking, the buying, the eating--they just aren't as interesting or useful anymore.
But here's the thing. The dark is extra dark but also the light is extra light. I walk down the street here with a stupid goofy grin on my face because while I am not always happy I am frequently full of joy. The colors feel brighter and my days don't whiz by in a creepy blur and I'm interested in my life. The smallest things--riding the cruiser around town, cheering at Nolie's soccer game, drinking coffee in the sun--fill me with intense pleasure.
That sounds crazy.
What I mean is that I think living with a whole lot more uncertainty (but maybe also less fear) makes me feel more alive. We were rich when we lived in Colorado but I think I spent a lot of time feeling dead inside. I guess we were living with uncertainty, too, but I had surrounded myself with a pretty thick layer of routine and numbing and security.
If the bad can't get in, though, the good can't either.
This has not been an easy lesson to learn. I really dislike discomfort and pain and sadness and embarrassment and shame and failure. Here they are in my face a lot. It's like every day is a mother fucking adventure in what-the-hell-is-going-to-happen-now.
Everyday is a mother fucking adventure.
That doesn't sound so bad.
I don't know what I'm going to get from one day to the next, or how I will handle it, or what kinds of grace or mercy I'm going to need next. That feels a lot like being alive.
Martha Beck says this:
"Emotional discomfort, when accepted, rises, crests, and falls in a series of waves. Each wave washes parts of us away and deposits treasures we never imagined. No one would call it easy, but the rhythm of emotional pain that we learn to tolerate is natural, constructive, and expansive. It’s different from unwilling suffering the way the sting of disinfectant is different from the sting of decay; the pain leaves you healthier than it found you."
Maybe all this is just me getting healthy.
Here's the other thing. I'm pretty sure I believed strongly in "meritocracy" as life philosophy. I believed if you were good, people would be good back, and if you did everything right and paid your bills and showed up and checked the boxes, good things would happen to you.
Cheryl Strayed, who doesn't believe in God but to me is a beautiful incarnation of God herself, writes in Tiny Beautiful Things, "To use our individual good or bad luck as a litmus test to determine whether or not God exists constructs an illogical dichotomy that reduces our capacity for true compassion.... It fails to acknowledge that the other half of rising--the very half that makes rising necessary--is having first been nailed to the cross."
I'm not saying I'm Jesus here, of course. Or that our challenges have even been that bad, in relative terms. I am saying that I have spent a whole lot of time trying to prevent bad things from happening to me by being good, believing that if something bad happened it was because I was not good enough.
But no. The darkness is not your punishment. It is your friend. The dark things are what lead you to the light. The cross is what leads you to redemption.
The flipside of trying to always do "right" is I feel like I spent most of my life barreling through to-do lists, forcing things to happen by sheer force of will without even being sure I actually wanted them to happen. There was so much supposed to happening there. I'm not talking about morality; I still think we strive to be our best selves, whenever possible, and to not hurt others, and to be kind and loving. But for a long time I was being someone else's version of that best self.
That is a lifetime of conditioning that needs undoing, because shoulds and supposed to's are dulling mechanisms. Figuring out what you actually want, apart from what you think you should do, is much more interesting. And radical. And terrifying. And good.
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