Tag Archive for: parenting

A Messy Kind of Gratitude

On Friday I was inconsolable for much of the day, my grief only giving way to let flashes of anger and indignance in as I posted sharp calls for gun control and increased funding for mental health on my Facebook page.  Mostly, though, I sobbed.

At some point, I knew I had to turn off the radio and move forward, however slowly, and so when I picked Eve and Lola up from school, I decided I was done for a bit.  We talked about the Newtown school shooting until Lola plugged her ears and begged us to stop and then we all huddled together in a shaky hug and agreed to let it sit for a while.

The weekend was full of affection and family time.  We didn’t turn on the news at all – radio or TV – and instead went to see The Hobbit and baked holiday treats to share with family.  I checked Facebook and my email very sparingly and only once or twice asked myself whether I was avoiding something I ought to be paying attention to.  I didn’t answer myself.

Despite a friend’s suggestion to watch President Obama’s speech at the interfaith service held on Sunday, I skipped it.  I am not sure whether I was afraid it would crack me wide open again or if there was something else at work but this morning I feel as though I know how I can best frame all of this for myself.  At least for now.

I started a gratitude practice about a year ago in an effort to ward off depression.  When I was really wrestling with darkness, mornings were the most challenging time for me.  I often woke up with only one eye at a time so I could gauge whether that semi truck of pain and longing was heading for me before I put my feet on the floor.  A friend suggested that before I open my eyes, I start a list of things for which I am truly grateful. A sort of shield against that truck hurtling my way.  I figured it couldn’t hurt.

In the beginning it was hard to come up with a list. Not because I don’t have many, many blessings in my life, but because I have an innate tendency to qualify them.  As soon as I think of one, I either compare it to someone else and feel guilty that, say, my kids are healthy and my friend’s aren’t, which effectively soils the gratitude, or it feels trite and petty, like being grateful that I have enough money to pay my bills.  Even in my gratitude practice, I found myself wanting – either for more ‘pure’ things like love (which feel too nebulous to me to be grateful for sometimes), or for deep, profound items on my list.  I am nothing if not stubborn, though, and motivated to keep the depression at bay, and so, pathetic as my lists could be sometimes, I kept going. I hoped that maybe tomorrow I would come up with something beyond my kids, my husband, and my health to be grateful for.

I have, to be sure, developed my understanding of gratitude over the past year, but this morning I came to a much greater sense of how to incorporate it into my life.  Since I began this practice, I have seen gratitude as a balance sheet, a yin and yang where the black never bleeds into the white.  Where the two sides are separate and I can choose to exist in either one world or the other at any given time.  Where even if I saw something on that ugly side of the page that felt overwhelming like the Newtown shooting I could quickly jump to the other side and say to myself, “My kids are healthy and safe at their school right now. I am so grateful for that.”

This morning things got a little muddy.  Because the fact is, I do exist in both of those realities simultaneously and I don’t want to compare the two things.  I came to realize that I can be knee-deep in the muck that is my sadness and grief about the events of last Friday and still find beauty in the world.  The two things simply are.  One does not cancel the other out.  One does not mitigate the effects of the other.  One does not explain or deny the other. They both simply are.  And I can be in both at the same time and have both utter desolation and an appreciation for the gifts I experience without judging.

When my father was dying and we both knew it,  we were devastated.  We could sit together and acknowledge that we wouldn’t likely have much time left together and still find joy in silly things like stories about my girls’ antics or watching a football game.  It wasn’t about forgetting or denying that he was dying, it was about recognizing that and allowing it and sitting with it as we found love and companionship.

I think, too, it is about acknowledging my particular place.  That I can be a force for love and light in the world when I remember to do so. And that there will be times I am fully flawed and I spew anger or create chaos, but that both the dark and the light exist within me, not in discrete spaces sealed off from each other, but swirled together in a vast, cosmic mud puddle where I will sometimes squish into the muck and other times splash with joy.  And I am but a small reflection of the world in which I reside that also contains both of these elements.  In this way, choosing to honor those things for which I am grateful is not a denial or refusal to look at the things I find painful or ugly, but an acceptance that they are as real and as valid as the other.  Today, that makes the beauty a little messier, but no less wonderful.

Birthday Melancholy

Eve stayed up later than usual last night.  After I went upstairs to kiss her goodnight, I came back down to the family room, settled on the couch and began my nightly ritual of scanning the on-screen guide to see if there was anything on TV that I could stand to watch.

There wasn’t.

Just as I was pressing the power button, I heard the stairs squeak and Eve’s head peered around the corner.  She sat on the opposite end of the couch from me and looked all around my face, avoiding my eyes.  At first I thought she was afraid of getting in trouble for coming back downstairs, but it didn’t take me long to figure out what was really going on.

It was the last night she would ever be twelve.
The last night before becoming a teenager.
There was no going back.

Eve is generally fairly stoic, at least when it comes to uncomfortable emotion.  She is perfectly happy to  show her support or enthusiasm for something and feels free to express her excitement in most every situation. What she doesn’t do easily is talk about things that bother her or cry in front of anyone.

I waited.

She talked a little about something that made her mad that day and said she wished I didn’t just assume I knew how she would react.  And then it came,

“…just because I’m older. Just because I’m a teenager now, doesn’t mean I don’t care about that stuff anymore.”

I put my hand on the blanket beside me, welcoming her to come sit with me.

“Why?” It was more wary than questioning.

“Because I want to give you a hug. I’m sorry you are unhappy and I will do my best to ask you for your input each and every time, no matter what your age from now on.”

She booted the cat off the couch and snuggled into my side, her hip in the curve of my waist, her head tucked into the side of my neck.

And I told her a story.  About being pregnant with her and knowing that I had all the answers. I decided that my kid wasn’t going to be a “binky baby,” that she would be exclusively breastfed and that she would always, always sleep in her own bed.  And I knew with certainty that if I just started out this way and never wavered, it would be a piece of cake.

Turns out cake doesn’t agree with me (unless it’s gluten free).

By day 3, I was tired of spending my days with my pinky finger stuck in her mouth as she sucked to self-soothe. I picked the shortest route to Target and bought a dozen pacifiers, stuck one in each car and in every room of the house, and tethered one to the frontpack I carried her in.  Finally, peace and a non-soggy finger!

Eve and I were the world’s worst breastfeeding duo. I had inverted nipples and enough milk to feed a small African country and she had a gag reflex that rivaled any I’ve ever seen.  She was starving, I was bleeding and pumping off three or more ounces every couple of hours just to get her to latch on.  It was miserable.  We did finally figure it out, but it took six weeks for me to feel comfortable leaving the house when I thought I might have to nurse her in public because it was such an intricate dance.

And the sleeping.  Well, that was the hardest part.  On paper, it sounded like the right thing to do.  We had a bassinet in our room for her, but it was winter and she was cold in there. Plus, I carried her around all day long in the front pack, so she was used to being nestled up right against a human while she slept.  And the thing is, I loved it.  I loved going through my day sniffing her soft downy head and taking every opportunity to reach down and stroke her chubby little cheek.

We would put her to bed in her bassinet and within 30 minutes she would howl.  I knew that I would be feeding her at least twice in the night anyway, and it was so much easier to bring her back to my bed, nurse her and fall asleep than it was to finish feeding her and get out of bed to put her back.  And even back then, Bubba traveled a lot for work, so having her next to me in bed was lovely and comforting.

Eve was never a snuggler. Bubba’s dad was frustrated that she wouldn’t just climb into his lap for a story as a toddler. She wanted to sit next to him and turn the pages, but not on him.  She didn’t like other people besides Bubba and me picking her up, even as an infant.  She gave great hugs, but didn’t cuddle like some kids.  But when we were asleep, she would curl right into me for a little while and sigh. It was absolute Heaven.

As I look at her now, turning 13 today, I know she is filled with excitement and trepidation. I know she can’t wait to have some of the trappings of teenager-dom, but she is feeling a little melancholy about growing up.  I am, too.  I am so proud of her and the person she is becoming and I miss rolling over and seeing her dark hair splayed out across the pillow on the other side of the bed.  I feel so lucky that she sat with me on the couch last night and let me play with her hair and tell her a story of how much I cherish the sweet times we had together.

Happy birthday, my girl! You are my treasure.

Where My Mind Shouldn’t Go

Three posts in four days. That used to be the norm, but in the last year, I have gone to one or two a week and felt just fine with it.  I know I’m working something out in my psyche when I feel the need to write here more often and I also know it when I start to live in the stream of consciousness.

Stream of consciousness thinking is a way for me to dissociate. It feels like skating on a frozen pond, gliding across without any fear, gazing down below my feet and noticing fish darting about.  Every once in a while I magically breach the ice and reach in to get a closer look at one particular fish and sometimes I follow it for a while before letting go and coming back up to the surface.

I think that this process allows me to divorce myself from my normal routine or patterns of thinking and simply float through thoughts until one snags my attention.  Strings of thought emerge as I begin to notice which kinds of things are pulling me in and often I am able to come to some deeper understanding than I would have if I had diligently worked on finding a solution.

Sometimes, though, the things that catch my attention pull me in ways I’d rather not go.  At my physical yesterday, my doctor told me she felt a lump on my thyroid gland and wanted me to get an ultrasound to look at it.  She wasn’t concerned at all and figured it was simply a benign nodule, but she wanted to be sure.  I took my original cue from her calm demeanor, scheduled the ultrasound for the next day, and went on my way.

Over the next 24 hours I skated on that pond, only looking at the fish that reminded me of my mother’s thyroidectomy some 20 years ago and the one that suggested maybe my hair was thinning and that might be a bad sign.  I skated past signs that said pithy things like, “If you’re going to get cancer, thyroid cancer is the one to get.”  I read my friend Emily’s blog, Holy Sit, where she writes about spending a year eradicating her cervical cancer using alternative medicine.  I woke up a full hour before my alarm went off, wishing I were tired because when I sleep I forget.  Opening my eyes, I looked at the dark room and rattled off a list of things for which I am grateful and that’s when the shaking began.

I managed to get the girls to school without betraying my emotions, only letting tears fall as I walked the dog around the block to pee.  I wondered who would help Bubba raise my girls if I die. Or who would run the household for me if I get sick and lie in bed for a year.  I shoved the dire predictions out of my head with an impatient shake and decided to skate circles on that pond until my appointment, floating above everything else as long as I could.

When I got to the radiology department, more practical concerns entered my head.  I have a ‘thing’ about my neck.  I don’t like things touching it.  I wondered idly what would happen if I started gagging or giggling when the technician pressed the wand into my throat.  I wondered if I would be allowed to swallow while she did the exam.  I wondered if, on the off chance I started to cry, she would be able to discern the lump in my throat on her screen.  I wondered what causes that lump, anyway, when you are about to cry.

I had to lie on my back with a foam cylinder under my neck that tilted my head back and exposed my throat. I felt like a chicken on my great-grandmother’s chopping block.  ‘Make it quick!’ I imagined myself saying and felt like laughing at my own joke.  I had to turn left and then right as she swirled the wand over my throat through the warm goo, clicking keys on her keyboard and taking 40 pictures or more.  When I swung my head to the right, I could see the screen clearly and watched as she marked off measurements, “THYROID SUP,” “L LAT THYROID.”  Then she started marking off smaller areas just to the side of my thyroid and a tear slid from the corner of my eye into my right ear.

After 30 minutes, she handed me a towel and told me she saw nothing out of the ordinary.  There are nodules.  They are perfectly normal – happens to a lot of people.  It may not affect how my thyroid functions at all, but now that we know they are there, we will want to keep an eye on them.

When she left the room so I could change out of the gown, I let myself cry hot tears of relief.  I buried my face in the gown and sobbed. And then I went to the grocery store.  After all, Eve’s birthday slumber party is tonight and we have to have supplies.

Post-Holiday Stream of Consciousness

I guess, technically, it’s pre-holiday, too, considering that Christmas is coming up, but Thanksgiving and Christmas always sort of lump together in my mind and heart like one long slow hill up to the top of this rickety roller coaster that dumps me down a thrilling dive to Christmas, up another little dip and down again on New Year’s.  I wonder when or if I will ever see these holidays as different.  My image of them has been shaped by the school calendar, anticipating the break from routine just as much as the actual decorating and annual Nutcracker viewing and rip-and-tear on the morning of the 25th.

I had my annual physical today and was grateful for so many things.  The doctor who comes in and doesn’t touch me for at least 20 minutes as she asks me how I’m doing and what’s going on in my life. The fact that she remembers the stories I told her of stress and my husband’s health history and my writing three months ago when I was there.  The enormous, green vein nestled in the crook of my left elbow (antecubital fossa – that’s forever my favorite anatomy term) that is easily visible to any lab tech and gives up blood without rolling or closing down or even making a squeak.  I was enormously grateful to Bubba for being in town to get the girls ready and off to school so I could schedule my physical first thing in the morning and not have to go without coffee or food for too long.  Tremendously grateful for health insurance that allows me to make this annual pilgrimage to keep tabs on my health.

I am having so much fun shopping for the kids in the family this year. I always do, but forget about it throughout the year. Even if some of them won’t be with me when they open them, I delight in finding goofy little things that conjure up memories or that one special item I know they can’t get where they are. I used to start shopping in August because I thought I was supposed to get a jump on the holidays, but I always ended up with a closet full of gifts, too many to give each person, embarrassed by the amount of money I had spent.  I shifted to making lists  of possible ideas starting in August, but quickly realized that stressed me out more than anything – making sure the items would still be available when I was ready to buy them. When we shifted to drawing names for adults so that each of us only bought for one other person, I began to get back into the joy of finding that one special gift.  We still buy gifts for all the kids, though, and that is my favorite part.  Like most things, I’m much more sanguine about that these days, picking up things as I come across them in my daily errands or leafing through catalogs in the evenings.

A few years ago I started making anti-gift lists for Eve and Lola in an effort to avoid the things we either had too many of or simply didn’t want in the house. Barbie dolls, Polly Pocket, anything pink (in Lola’s case)….I may have added a few things to that list that weren’t preapproved by the girls but I figure that’s my prerogative as the mom.  This year, I happened to mention to my sister-in-law that if she got Eve gift cards to either Hollister or Abercrombie (which she put high on her list of desires), she could get me a corresponding gift by offering to take her shopping there for me.  I hate both of those stores for so many reasons.  I have a girlfriend who calls them both “the naked boy store” because the shopping bags have black and white photos of half-naked boy-men on them with their jeans pulled down to show their hip bones.  There are posters of these boys throughout the store – not that you can see them very well because the stores are so dimly lit that I have been known to mortify Eve by pulling out my phone to shine it on a price tag or two.  There is an overwhelming stench of perfume, so much so that within five minutes of being inside, I can taste it in the back of my throat and begin hacking like a cat with a hairball.  There is never anyone at the locked dressing rooms which means someone has to go hunting for help. At first, I offered to stand in line while Eve went, but that generally resulted in her becoming distracted by other items she wanted to try on and inevitably I stood there for 15 minutes before she finally came back and said she was too shy to ask anyone.  There is only ever one person behind the checkout counter, with five or six other employees scattered throughout the store folding clothes and putting them back on racks.  This means that I stand in line while Eve wanders to look for other things and then I have to step out of line while she goes to try “just one more thing” on. I may have spewed all of this frustration to my SIL. I may have been a little vehement about it.  I may have just put the kibosh on any gift cards from either of those stores. Depends on how badly she wants to be the celebrity aunt. Or how much wine she has before shopping…

I Miss My Easy Bake Oven

*Note: This photo is not of me. This girl is waaaaay younger than I was when I got my Easy Bake. I got it from Wikimedia Commons

Times have changed.

Man, even thinking about uttering that phrase makes me feel old – as old as I thought my grandparents were when I was a kid, and that’s ancient!

I was having coffee with the mother of one of Eve’s friends yesterday and somehow we got to talking about the things we fear most about having a teenage daughter.  It’s hard to even begin to know what we are up against, given how different their world is from what we knew.

The two of us shared the requisite stories of summer days spent completely unsupervised by anyone other than our older siblings (who often meant us as much harm as not).  Those mornings when we would dash out the door in packs, or looking for the roving packs of neighbor kids, to the familiar refrain of, “Be back in time for dinner!” were absolutely priceless.   Not in small part due to the fact that if our parents had known half of the stupid stunts we pulled, their hearts would have stopped no less than a dozen times a day.

We did things I wouldn’t let my girls do one tenth of. I rode my bike barefoot or with flip-flops (and lost toenails when I crashed). I rode on the handlebars of my brother’s bike as he tore down our steep hill as fast as he could.  No helmets. Only a front brake that would catapult both of us off the bike in a heartbeat if he squeezed it.  Oh, and did I mention that at the end of the street was a set of train tracks running perpendicular to it?  We never stopped. We never looked. Despite the fact that I lie in bed at night listening to the whistle of those trains coming through, it never occurred to me that one might come ripping down those tracks at the very moment we were bumping across them in a mad dash to get to the park that lay on the other side.  Never.

I could go on, but I suspect we all have stories like that from the 1960s and 1970s. Stories of freedom and exhileration and death-defying stunts that we only realized were incredibly stupid when we became parents ourselves.

And then the car seat laws had been enacted.
And we knew about sex predators lurking and lying in wait for unattended children.
And we bought bike helmets and knee pads for our kids and made them wear them.

And the dangers became more nebulous. Like online stalking. Cyberbullying. Sexting.

At least while we were endangering ourselves, we were having fun.  Real, actual, physical fun. We were playing slingshot tag (yes, someone sat in a tree with a slingshot and hurled a bb or a gravel bit or a plastic pellet at people running by and if you got hit, you were ‘it,’) or exploring construction sites or playing hide and seek in the condemned house down the road.  If someone pissed you off, they did it to your face and, often, others in the group would choose sides and it would be settled right there.  Generally with blood spilled or rocks being thrown, but it was settled face-to-face.

When I think about Eve turning 13 and wanting a Facebook page and her own cell phone, my head hurts.  I am fully aware that I don’t know most of the things that could go wrong. Yes, we’ve talked about being careful not to share too much personal information about herself and not “connecting” to people online that she doesn’t know in person.  But, just like my parents, I’m certain that most of the things she will encounter are not things that I could have anticipated, and it’s because of this that I wish I could get her to trade me her digital identity for some of those other things we had as kids.

I’d give her a woodburning set for her Facebook page.  Sure, my brother used it to threaten to brand me if I didn’t do his bidding, but that’s how I learned to stand up for myself. And think creatively (it took me a while, but I finally figured out that if I broke the tip off the damn thing, he couldn’t sear his initials in my left butt cheek).

I’d give her an Easy Bake Oven for her text minutes.  My sister and I kept ours in our bedroom. And lest you think we had rats or ants, let me be clear that we only baked cakes in it for the first week we had it. After that we experimented with Shrinky Dinks and our brothers’ socks and Barbie dolls. Yes, in our room. Yes, it’s a wonder that we didn’t burn the freaking house down.

Okay, maybe I wouldn’t trade her any of those things.  But I do hope that someday she has a friend that she can reminisce with about all the insane stuff she and her sister pulled behind my back. And I truly, honestly, deeply hope that none of it has anything to do with the Internet or cell phones.  Lawn darts maybe.  Or a bb gun. Or a bungee cord.

Driveway Moments

Just in case you hadn’t heard the term before (clearly you are not an NPR-listener if you haven’t), “driveway moments” is a phrase used to describe what happens when you are en route to a particular place with the radio on and become fully engrossed in a story or interview that is happening on NPR. So fully engrossed that, despite reaching your destination, you are loathe to leave the car and miss the end of the story/interview/program.  In our family, we have our own version of this, compliments of the move to the city.

Last year and the year before, I drove carpool to and from Eve’s school in the city several times a week.   On any given carpool route, I could have between three and six girls in my car who ranged in age from eight to 14.  Oh, the things I heard!  (Just as an example, check out this post from last year.) And we had fun. I always provided snacks because the trek from school to home was generally around 45 minutes and for a middle-school-girl to wait that long after school to eat is, well, impossible.  On Fridays, I always had chocolate which somehow became known as “carpool love,” and it wasn’t long before my car was officially named the Party Bus. I was always teasing the girls and asking them irreverent questions about their day and sometimes I was really quiet and hoped they would forget I was there and talk about things they didn’t especially want their parents to hear. It worked.  I really miss that this year.

But…

This year, the trip to and from school is only eight minutes and the only girls in my car are Eve and Lola.  And it rocks.

You wouldn’t think (I certainly didn’t) that we could have much of a conversation in the eight minutes between school and home, but we can.  There is something about having us all in the car, looking in different directions that feels informal and open.  Generally someone will ask an innocent question or share some snippet from a book they’re reading or play their favorite song for us and that’s all it takes to get the ball rolling.  More and more, as I pull up to the curb outside school and watch girls pile out of cars and run toward the building, Eve and Lola and I are snug in our car finishing up a conversation about life or teachers or just about anything else you can imagine.  More and more, I have to urge them to gather their things and head inside before they are late, not because they are resisting school, but because we are having a “driveway moment” of our own.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Shades of “Wicked”

Bubba’s out of town this weekend so I decided we were having a Girls’ Weekend.  I found some tickets to “Wicked” that weren’t crazy ridiculous expensive and made a reservation at a nice restaurant.  The girls were excited to get dressed up and head out for a night on the town and going to see a musical sounded a heck of a lot more thrilling than going to yet another movie theater to eat overpriced popcorn.

After a fantastic dinner of Spanish tapas followed by pumpkin flan (have I mentioned how much I appreciate the girls being adventurous eaters?!), we walked the two blocks to the theater.  None of us had ever seen “Wicked” before, and we had pretty good seats with no NBA-size humans blocking our view or sniffly patrons sitting next to us.

Eve sat in the middle, being a little stranger-phobic, so it was intermission before I could check in with Lola to see what she thought. She is typically very thoughtful at shows, not revealing any outward signs of appreciation or distaste, so I fully expected to have to wait until the show was over to get her full assessment.  The only thing she asked was if she could switch seats with me for the second act so she could get a little better view.

Eve, on the other hand, was thrilled. She repeatedly turned to me with her mouth hanging open in reaction a hilarious moment or a particularly good solo. She was obviously having a ball. When we arrived home waaaaay past bedtime, I asked Lola for her full assessment.

“It was okay. It wasn’t the best, but it was good.”

Huh?
Really?
Did I hear that right?
Carefully, so as not to make her feel bad, I asked her why “it wasn’t the best.”

“I wanted her (Elphaba) to hurry up and get wicked. I wanted her to be bad. I kept waiting for that.”

For anyone who doesn’t know the story of “Wicked,” it is the backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West from the “Wizard of Oz.” It cleverly and artfully tells the real story of Elphaba and how she got to be so hated and reviled by everyone in Oz (if she actually was hated and reviled by everyone in Oz).
Turns out she wasn’t all that evil. A lot of it was bad press and how she felt about herself all folded in with some misunderstandings and a bit of entrapment.

Enter the land of Moral Ambiguity.  Of course,  this is the land we all live in, but it doesn’t often rear its head in entertainment. Kids’ programs are rife with Good v. Evil, Hero v. Villain.  There is very little moral ambiguity or compassion or striving to understand why the bad guy is the bad guy and how he got that way.  When your child is two or three or four, the world is explained to them in terms of can and can’t, yes and no, good choices versus bad ones.  It’s faster that way and easier for them to understand.  But at some point, this world view comes into question and doesn’t serve any of us anymore.  Unfortunately, it makes things a lot murkier and more challenging to understand, and I think Lola is wishing for the simplicity of that black and white Universe again. How the heck do you know who to root for when Glinda the Good Witch isn’t all good and Elphaba isn’t downright deplorable?

——————————————————————————————————————–
The Girls’ Weekend wasn’t all tapas and theaters.  Earlier in the day, the three of us decided to work on a project I’ve been wanting to start since we moved in June.  We made it about 10 minutes before the girls’ opinions clashed like two cymbals, sending reverberations through my brain and chest.  Lola, having chosen not to eat breakfast, lost her mind like she always does when her blood sugar drops, stomping down the hall and slamming the door to her room, throwing herself on the bed and screaming into a pillow over and over again.  Eve rolled her eyes and made some comment about how she was clearly in the right here.  I decided to cut my losses, abandon the project and go start some laundry.  As I walked away, Eve exploded.

“Oh, so just because she won’t compromise I get punished? You just walk away from me?”

As I stopped a few feet away and turned to face her the diatribe continued.

“She ALWAYS does this! She NEVER wants to think about what anyone else wants!”

Deep breath. In – two – three – four – five. Out – two – three – four -five.

I opened my mouth to refute the claim that Lola is the poster child for selfish behavior.  “That isn’t true and you know it. She is very generous and thoughtful –“

“HA! She is not! Every single day she is mean and whenever I ask her to compromise she throws a fit!!”

I had to choke back laughter. I am not sure who she was talking about, but Lola is not anything like Eve was making her out to be. Unfortunately, Eve was on a tear. She had crested the top of the hill and was steaming down the tracks 120 mph. No way I was standing in front of that thing with my hand raised. She was not about to listen to anything I said that didn’t fit neatly in to her idea of how evil and wrong her sister is.

Thankfully, five minutes later she had run out of steam. I let her sputter to a stop and sat down.  I pointed out that Lola had likely been sitting around the corner in her bedroom listening to every single nasty word about her that came out of Eve’s mouth.  I suggested that maybe hearing her sister characterize her as a selfish, mean-spirited, hateful person just might feel pretty awful.

“If she hears you saying those things about her, she just might believe you mean them.  The fact is, you were both inflexible and you both got angry. There is no one of you that was being the Angel to the other one’s Devil.”

Huge eye roll. “Oh yeah? She is the Devil! She is! She is so mean to me every single day!”

Clearly we aren’t done here.

“She isn’t. I can point out to you dozens of times when your sister thought about you before thinking about herself.  I know it’s easier to remember the times when she was mean or pissed you off, but if you’re being completely honest, you have to admit that there are more times when she treats you with love and respect than there are times when she is nasty and mean. And I truly believe that she is taking your hateful words to heart right now. That she is probably feeling really terrible that you think she is 100% awful and unlovable.”

“I was exaggerating, Mom! I was angry! I didn’t really mean that she’s that bad!”

“How does she know that? She’s upset, too, and There is no Right person and Wrong person. There may be times when one of you is more willing to be flexible than the other, but that doesn’t mean one of you is bad and the other one is good.”

Of course, so much of what the girls are experiencing in the world right now is about this sort of black and white thinking.  While I am doing my best to not vilify anyone, it is often difficult for me to not paint political candidates in shades of Right and Wrong.  And even if they aren’t getting it at home, the radio and television (and the neighborhood yard signs) are full of polarizing slogans and messages that pit candidates against each other in the most oppositional of ways.  We are fully soaked in A vs. B, Good vs. Evil until Election Day and I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.  On the one hand, I’m with Lola, that if there is a clear choice between Glinda and Elphaba, I feel better about making a decision. But I’m old enough to know that nobody is all bad or all good and I wish it wasn’t human nature to characterize each other in that way so as to justify our own actions and reactions.

Our 21-Day Sugar Fast

Well, tonight is the last night of our family’s 21-day sugar fast.  After a busy, debaucherous summer (we discovered every gelato, frozen custard and chocolate shop within walking distance in our new neighborhood) I decided to start the school year off right.  My first two acts were to limit the number of days that school lunches could contain chips of any sort to two and to impose a ban on sugar of any kind for 21 days.

The girls sputtered and moaned, but I pointed out that I would be foregoing some of my favorite things, too (ahem, wine contains sugar, people!), and they scuffled their feet and nodded their heads.  There was no denying we overindulged this summer and I was intent on breaking the habit of having some sort of treat each and every day.

The ban extended to honey and agave (the girls love to put it in their tea and on bread), but not to sugar from whole fruit.

The first morning came with a new kind of awakening:  my favorite breakfasts all include sugar of some sort.  Yogurt with fruit and granola – out.  Baked goods (even gluten-free ones) – out. Oatmeal with brown sugar and dried fruit – out. Even a bagel with cream cheese was unacceptable since the bagel has sugar in it to make the bread rise.  Eggs became my best friend for a while.

I headed to the local co-op to grind my own nut butters, sans salt or sugar, and stock up on sweet-tasting veggies like sugar snap peas and sweet bell peppers.  I learned to make oatmeal with dried fruit and water that leached the sweetness out of the fruit to add to the oats.  I discovered that most commercial salad-dressings contain sugar or cane juice or agave and stuck to salads without.  The girls were horrified to learn that most brands of ketchup have sugar as their second or third ingredient and that honey-mustard was no longer an option for their chicken nuggets (homemade and GF).

Within three days we had all lost our cravings for treats such as ice cream or cookies after dinner, and were continually shocked to find other things that contained ‘hidden’ sugars – like sweet potato chips and even some canned soups.  We hadn’t felt like we ate much sugar in our regular diet (not counting desserts or occasionally indulgent Sunday breakfasts of waffles or pancakes), but we were pretty amazed to find that we eat a lot more than we thought.

None of us had any sort of earth-shattering revelations from our sugar fast like physical symptoms disappearing or behavioral changes, but I do think I lost a few pounds. It would be hard to know given that I don’t own a scale, but my pants feel a bit looser. I did cheat one night when Bubba and I went out to dinner to celebrate selling his company, indulging in a few glasses of wine.  I woke up around 2am, my heart pounding with anxiety and my mouth dry from dehydration – a good bit of information to tuck away for future reference.

Probably the most profound lessons I learned, however, are these:

1.  We can do it – all of us. The girls were absolute troopers, even given the fact that their friends at school were constantly bringing in treats to share (although they can’t have most of them given their gluten allergy, anyway).  They did keep a count of how many days were left in the challenge, but never, ever did either of them break in to a massive whine festival or refuse to try.

2.  There is a LOT more sugar/honey/agave in our diet than we ever realized.  The girls and I decided that next time it would be cool to measure how many teaspoons of sugar we managed to avoid in 21 days and pile it up on the counter in a bowl.  I suspect it would freak us all out at the end of the challenge.

Tomorrow I will let the girls have a decadent breakfast as a reward for their hard work and willingness to try the sugar fast, but I know that their awareness of what they put in to their bodies has just become that more attuned and they aren’t likely to seek out sugar every day anymore.  Eve, who has a sweet tooth to rival The Candyman, admitted to me that she has stopped craving sugary treats altogether. That doesn’t mean she won’t accept a gluten-free cupcake or a trip to frozen custard now and then, but if we can keep it to a minimum, I’ll be one happy mom.

Taking the Toddler Approach

As I listened to the girls snipe at each other on the way home from school the other day, instead of allowing my blood pressure to rise, resisting the urge to insert my words into the cacophony of chaos and swirling anger, I detached. I listened.  I traced the progression of hurt, fear, anger, misunderstanding.  Later, as Lola set the table for dinner, a new argument erupted and I again noted the path from misinterpretation to rage and a thought began to crystallize.  A question:

What if, at any point during the escalating war of words, one of my girls stopped to ask ‘why?’

  • Why would she say/do something like that to me?
  • Why does it bother me so much?
As an observer who knows both of my girls and their developmental stages intimately (Lola – fearful of transitions and just starting a new school, living in a new house and neighborhood and meeting all new friends. Eve – nearly thirteen and experiencing everything as if it were personally aimed at her and her burgeoning identity and having her younger sister encroaching on her school territory for the first time in years), I can instantly spot the moments where perception and interpretation is everything.  I can see where a word was misheard or an intention assumed that wasn’t there.  But by the time I wedge my perspective into the middle, the harsh words have already inflicted pain and harm and the fight is no longer able to be stopped.  
A few months ago I heard someone say, “Most people listen with the intent to respond rather than the intent to understand.”  I felt myself in that realization.  I cringed as I looked back to the numerous times I had barely been able to hold my tongue until the other person took a breath before I inserted my story/wisdom/advice/perspective.  I was embarrassed. Fortunately, that uncomfortable feeling soon gave way to curiosity.  How much information and clarity am I missing by not seeking to understand what someone is telling me? How often am I arresting their narrative by shifting the focus of the conversation to what I have to say?  
All it takes is ‘why.’ 
For those of us who have been around young children and toddlers, whether as aunts and uncles or parents or teachers or grandparents, we recall with enormous sighs the days of “Why.”  The days where every answer or statement is met with the question, “Why?”  Where no amount of information is ever enough.  We have all been pushed to our limits of patience and, often, knowledge, by the rapid-fire inquisition of a curious child.  And while that is exhausting and often annoying, I wondered the other day if it isn’t something we all ought to be doing more of as adults – asking why.  
I think that the power of why lies in its ability to stop the ego-centric notion that most of us walk around with all day long, that everything that happens around us or even to us is about us.  That the checker at the grocery store who appeared to roll her eyes at me might have entirely different reasons for doing so than I originally think.  Why would she do that?  Maybe her contact lens slid off to the side of one eye and that’s how she gets it back on track.  Perhaps she heard something on the radio in the store that I didn’t key into. Or maybe, yes, maybe she thinks I’m annoying for some reason.  Okay. Why does her eye-rolling bother me? Because I feel judged by her? Because I was actually being somewhat annoying by insisting on something extra and I feel a little guilty about it?  Because I got in a fight with my teenager this morning and I’m feeling a little emotionally fragile?  
I haven’t solved my issue here, but I have given myself a moment to breathe by asking the questions, and I have also considered things that give me more information about the way I am feeling.  The important part is that I haven’t assumed anything that might send my mood spiraling out of control or cause me to growl at the checker when she may not deserve it.  
I haven’t broached this subject with Eve and Lola yet because I wanted to test it out on myself for a few days first.  So far, I have learned a few things:
  1. Asking, “Why?” gives me the opportunity to step back from a biting remark uttered by one of my children and acknowledge that there might be a reason she is being snarky right now. It doesn’t excuse the behavior, but it does allow me to consider whether or not she has had a bad day and refrain from taking her remark as a personal slight.
  2. After this momentary breather, I am often able to ask “Why?” out loud which gives the other person a chance to examine their own behavior and either explain to me something I may have misunderstood or realize how it sounded.  It also gives them the impression that I am willing to stay engaged in the interaction in a positive way, listening and truly trying to understand, and it often has the effect of turning the conversation around.
As a child I was known as a chatterbox and, feeling impotent to change that or battle the label, I embraced it.  At the age of 40, I’m beginning to see just how much I may have missed out on by not staying quiet more often and simply listening.  

Debunking the Myth: “We Are Never Given More Than We Can Handle”

I decided to take advantage of the Indian Summer we are having in the Seattle area today and finally pull some of the weeds in the yard.  As I squatted in the dirt, my beloved hori hori (Japanese weeding miracle pictured above) in one hand and an enormous pile of dandelions and chickweed piling up next to me, the neighbor’s toddler began to scream.  Great, gulping wails of sadness punctured every few sobs by a blood curdling shriek.  My sequence of thoughts went a little like this:

  • Thank God that’s not my kid.
  • Poor dear. He sounds so sad.
  • I wonder what’s going on in his head right now to make those screams necessary.
  • Thank God my kids are too old for naps.  I’ll bet she’s just put him down in his crib and left so he’ll sleep and he’s crying it out.
  • I wonder if she sits in the kitchen and cries like I used to.

    • And just like that, I was transported back to those incredibly lonely days of parenting a toddler. The days where I never really felt like I knew what I was doing and yet I had convinced myself that I had to present a confident picture to the world and my child.  The days where I woke up determined to follow the parenting books and let her cry herself to sleep so she would learn to soothe herself and caved somewhere around minute two, going in to lay down with her and stroke her back and kick myself for giving her mixed messages.  
    I hoped that my neighbor didn’t feel angry or scared or frustrated. I hoped that she felt like she had a good plan and didn’t feel a searing pain in her core each time her baby cried so dramatically.  I hoped she didn’t feel like this was more than she could handle. 
    ————————————————————————————-
    I remember visiting my grandfather the week after my high school graduation.  He had been caring for my grandmother in their home as she struggled with Alzheimer’s Disease and was coming to the point where he would have to make a decision about whether or not to move her to a nursing home.  I was there to party since he lived in Southern California near all my cousins and he had an extra bedroom.  Thanks to my grandmother’s dementia, he also had an extra car I could use.  
    I was shocked at my grandmother’s decline.  She was confused almost all the time and prone to wandering off for hours on end.  For someone who could barely remember her name, much less her address, this was alarming to say the least.  My grandfather had been reduced to a prison warden in his own home, watching his wife of 50 years waste away physically and mentally and having to scratch all of the grand retirement plans they had made together off the list of possibilities.  He was sad and a little bitter.  One night as we sat chatting after dinner (grandma was asleep on the couch in the living room clutching a bottle of Butterscotch schnapps), he talked about his frustrations.  I didn’t know what to say. I had no life experience to draw from and I was at a complete loss.  I opened my mouth to say I don’t know what and he cut me off.
    “Don’t you dare say what your mother did. That God never gives us more than we can handle. That’s a load of bullshit! This is more than I can handle and I don’t believe that God stuff.  I only went to church  because it made your grandmother happy!”
    I was stunned.  I hadn’t been anywhere near about to say what he anticipated, but I suspect that what I was going to say would have been as cliche and useless as what he thought I would say.  I simply put my hand on his freckled arm and squeezed, my eyes full of tears.  
    ————————————————————————————-
    And so, knees in the dirt, I contemplated that platitude – that we are never given more than we can handle – and found it lacking.  I can count many times in my own life where I felt overloaded with grief or responsibility or pure ignorance in the face of obstacles.  Everyone I know has felt that way multiple times.  
    I decided that, instead, we are often faced with more than we can handle and maybe this is by design.  I know that when I find myself in that position what I have learned is to ask for help.  For most of my life I thought that asking for help was the definition of weakness and was determined to figure things out on my own.  The messages I got from my parents and the media and society as a whole informed me that independence is an important trait. That people who do things on their own are revered and praised.  I was in my 30s before I realized that the only thing independence got me was isolation and a deeper hole.  I felt lonely and less capable than ever when I tried to handle everything by myself and, while I may have eventually found my way out of that hole I was in, I didn’t do it in the most efficient way – often reinventing the wheel as part of my process – and I was bloody exhausted by the time I got out.  
    Human beings are social creatures.  We draw strength and information from each other.  Even those individuals who may be examples of pioneering spirit and a can-do attitude didn’t truly do anything on their own. They built on the successes of others who came before them. Or they benefited from the support and love of their family and friends.  Maybe being routinely faced with more than we can handle is the Universe’s way of ensuring that we continue to find ways to work together, to ask for assistance.  
    And when assistance isn’t possible, perhaps this overwhelming feeling serves another purpose – innovation.  For people who are struggling with lack of finances or mental illness or disabilities for which there is too much bureaucracy or too little empathy to find help, maybe the mounting troubles prompt action.  No one person is going to effect policy change, but if your difficulties spur you to action, to build community around your cause in an effort to make a difference, to rally voices loud enough to be heard by those in power, I’m not going to say it was “worth it,” because, honestly, we all wish we could simply sail through our days with fewer challenges, but maybe it serves a purpose.  
    Some of my closest friendships have been forged through the process of asking for help or being asked for help.  The people I most trust are those who recognized when I was in trouble and offered a hand without judging or mocking me.  And so, in that light, maybe I can appreciate (just the slightest bit) being given more than I can handle on occasion, if only to remind me that I should reach out and ask for help.  If only to help me recognize how much farther I can go when I am supported by others, buoyed by their wisdom and love.