Author: rrs905

If life is one big jigsaw puzzle, then all the pieces should — eventually — fit together. This is definitely heartening on days when it feels like I’m navigating that giant expanse of blended blue ocean pieces, searching for whisps of sea foam to distinguish one from another, or the rainforest section where everything is a variation of celadon to fern to emerald.

Speaking of rain forests, my husband brought home a tree last week. A house tree. Working in the apartment industry, there are often remodels of office space, model apartments and common areas. And often, there are knick knacks that are either thrown out, or free (or close to free) for the taking. This has been a benefit to us in the past. A little worn coach for a token $50 just because someone decided a new look in the model would show better online? Sure! For $50, our kids can definitely destroy that (one day we’ll have nice things…)! Random ugly framed art? Free frames! Totally worth sitting in our basement until the right artwork comes around. I’m on board. What about a house tree? Where would we put it?, I ask. It’s not that we live in a shoebox, but we definitely seem to have exceeded our stuff allotment. It’s a tree!, my husband says. We can’t just let them throw out a tree.  And in principle, I agree. A tree should be respected and tended. Except that now there is an 8-foot tree in my living room. We’ll give it a week, my husband says. Maybe two. Just to see.

It seems petty to mention that the real, live, growing tree is covering up my black vinyl sticker tree. My husband says that’s actually the best part, not because he hates vinyl sticker trees (I don’t think), but because you can see the blue birds right through the real tree’s branches! So it’s a tree within a tree!  You like trees, he points out. Our whole living room was full of pictures of trees, anyway. And this is true. In two weeks, I probably won’t even remember a time when there wasn’t an 8-foot tree in my living room.

In any case, I had far greater issues. This weekend while I was leaving the grocery store, I suddenly realized that I was ridiculously dehydrated. Luckily, the grocery store is one of the best places to realize that, and I actually had a 12-pack of sparkling water right in my very own cart. Being a woman of action, I immediately solved the hydration issue, but at unanticipated peril to my hand. A cardboard cut. The worst of the small but horrible cut variety. And right on my pinky! Do you know how often you use your pinky? Especially if you work in an office, with a keyboard? About eleventy-million times a day. Thank goodness my daughter had had an injury just horrible enough herself, earlier in the day, to need about 25 seconds of ice on the way to her soccer game. That ice, long since melted, but now a snack baggie of clean water in a grocery store parking lot, served as the first aid I needed to keep my limb and continue home. But seriously, eleventy-million times a day.

In tonight’s game of child care and activity hot potato, we had family dinner at the rec center between my oldest’s dance classes, as one does on a Tuesday. If I left work by 5:30, I could definitely make it on time. At 5:37, I was still feeling pretty optimistic. Four kids burrito bowls from Qdoba, please. All with chicken, rice, pico and black beans, but all four with a different combination of  queso, guacamole, cheese, and sour cream. And I realized, just for a moment, before I went back to being someone’s harried co-worker and mother and living life off a post-it note (dammit, another day where I didn’t renew those unread library books), that my puzzle pieces aren’t just indistinguishable shades of blue and green, even though sometimes they feel exactly like a turbulent ocean. My puzzle pieces are growing up right before my eyes, with growing preferences and senses of humor and talents and personalities and clear opinions on sour cream. How lucky am I to be sorting through these pieces and getting to know them well enough to fit them together.

Although, I admit, 20 minutes later, my zen had evaporated just enough that I was still kinda annoyed to realize that these were definitely my husband’s socks:

But whether it’s the beginnings of a forest in my living room (we’ll appreciate the extra oxygen come February), or home-spun philosophy found in the plating of a burrito bowl, I’m going to try to remember it’s usually best to accept the pieces as they come, even though some fit more easily than others. And to appreciate especially when there are literally random pieces. This is what my youngest left behind when she went to bed. Sight word homework, a Darth Vader head, an amethyst with a buffalo on it, and some Playdoh. I feel like that sums things up pretty well. My puzzle is a long way from complete, but really, I wouldn’t want to finish it anytime soon, anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lately, my on-repeat song is She Used to Be Mine by Sara Bareilles, from the stage version of Waitress. It’s a love song from the adult she is to the child she was. While certainly I don’t claim to have a stage-ready backstory, I get it. We change as we age, and we change as we grow, and sometimes those two things correspond. Certainly we change in leaps and bounds when we grow (mostly painfully) wiser, however old we are.

Before and afters are irresistible. We love transformation stories. It’s why fitness magazines tell us how Marsha lost 80 pounds and 10 pant sizes. It’s why 17 million people watched the Caitlyn Jenner interview. It’s why our rags to riches love has given us countless Cinderellas, Good Will Huntings and why we cheer when royalty marries a commoner. And conversely, it’s why MSN runs a dozen “90’s sitcoms stars – where are they now?!” stories a week. Transformations are good press, and what we both desire and fear. We can all name our own transformative moments, for better or for worse. Sometimes they’re clear as we’re living through them, and sometimes only in retrospect. Sometimes they’re moments of triumph, sometimes shame, sometimes just blood, sweat and tears. And then, in the after, we can say, that used to be me.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice said, “I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then.” Rarely do we have a morning as transformational as Alice’s, and yet occasionally we all go down the rabbit hole and come back changed.

These are events that transformed me, when I came through a different person, when I was a before and came back an after:

1. Studying abroad
2. Failing at marriage
3. Having children
4. Fixing a marriage
5. Getting health(ier)

I went to college out-of-state, but I still left for England a straight arrow kid with a happy childhood and few larger life experiences. And I came home a fairly straight arrow kid with a tattoo, an appreciation of alcohol and friends who broadened my horizons in all the best possible ways. I was still unlikely to disobey posted parking signs, but I was less naively judgmental. Maybe I would have accumulated the same experiences, just more slowly, at home, but I think my life would be completely different if I hadn’t taken my 19-year-old self across an ocean. Not that that was a panacea from future missteps.

Graduating with honors from college with a couple solid internships behind me, I was pretty sure I could write my own ticket. And maybe I could have, but I didn’t. When I got married the first time, at 22, I was my own pied piper, following a pretty fantasy, ignoring storm clouds, afraid to cash in that ticket and take some risks. And so I said yes, because to say no would be starting over and I was moving forward. But all momentum is not equal. It turns out that when you stop betting on yourself, your options become very narrow. You create a bunker that seems safe because you willfully (though with varying degrees of consciousness that are hard to determine in retrospect) created it without windows. For a variety of reasons that aren’t worth getting into here, I became smaller and smaller in that bunker. Failing at marriage was perhaps the best thing I ever did, for me. 2002 wasn’t my best year. But failure isn’t final. Sometimes it’s really just the beginning.

When you are pregnant, people say things to you like, It will change you. Your love is suddenly exponential, they say; you view the nightly news differently; your heart breaks in a million ways you never knew possible and your worries become infinite, and packing away outgrown onsies makes you cry. All true. Also your gag reflex will suffer indignities you never even considered, and then those things will become normal. You’ll realize that all the plans made for your child’s first year of development were brainstormed by the you that slept through the night and showered regularly, and suddenly Target disposable diapers look like an entirely reasonable compromise, and so sorry about the landfills. How did generations of mothers use diaper pins? Did they not require sleep to function with sharp objects? Your brain never quite recovers. Every morning you wake up foggy with a chance of mid-morning clarity. You’re more patient and stronger and more flexible and more tired. And you really do love to the moon and back. But you’re a complete before and after.

The thing about getting married (again, but at 25), and having children, and buying a house and paying for daycare, and losing jobs and having your plans falling apart is that it’s a lot. Not necessary more than anyone else, but just a lot. Sometimes too much. And if you forget that burdens shared are burdens halved, you start keeping all that angst to yourself, deep down, where it begins to rankle. Just a little. And then, slowly, it begins to fester, not so deep down, but closer to the surface, and all of a sudden, you’re just an angry, angry, disappointed person. And because your partner is also in the same boat, just as angry and disappointed in you as you are in them, your before and after is very much in the balance. Sometimes, the only answer is to walk away. Sometimes, you stay and fight, even though the fight is long and hard and sometimes seems like one step forward and five steps back. But you inch forward. And then sometimes, in the after, it’s like taking a deep breath, rounding a sudden hairpin curve and seeing the valley stretching out in front of you. It’s beautiful, and it’s green, and it needs to be tended, but it’s ready for fresh roots.

Before and after is never a sum total game. But the more transformations we have, we’re beginning to shape the who we want to eventually be. Because I failed, because I fought, because I joyfully, slowly, painfully grew, I’m healthier in mind, body and spirit than I was at 22, at 25. A year ago, I wasn’t the same person I am today, and thank goodness for that.

Our younger selves deserve a love song, even as imperfect as we were. We deserve the same today, imperfect as we remain. But better, perhaps, than yesterday. We were the before. We are the after, and we will be again.

As Alice said, “It’s no use going back to yesterday. I was a different person then.” Weren’t we all. And let’s go forward, thinking impossible things that create new happy (ever) after.

 

Sometimes, I get stuck in a loop of complaint. A whiny, grumbling gripefest. To be fair, I blame this partly on my fantastic support network who patiently listen to the same grousing time after time.

So, the last few days, I’ve made a conscious list of things along my path that I’m grateful for:

1. Grapefruit soap products. There is no better soap scent. When I go to a restaurant that has grapefruit scented soap, I automatically give them an extra star in my only-in-my-head rating system. Target stocks grapefruit scented soap erratically, but whenever I find it, it’s a big deal, and we stock up. I have grapefruit face scrub right now and it’s really the best part of my morning and sometimes why I get out of bed.
2. The initial joy of pockets in the fall. If there’s somehow a stray $5 in there, even better. I never know how that even happens, since I so rarely have cash at all. And yet, surprise pocket cash? So great. After a full summer season without jackets, with more skirts, which so rarely have good pockets, and more casual clothes, it’s so great to slip on a jacket and trade cute but impractical shorts in for serviceable jeans. And if I freak out about misplacing my keys a time or two at first? Where did I…. oh. Well, pockets are still great.
3. Space. About an hour before dawn, the sky is still dark as night. The world doesn’t quite know yet that it’s about to wake up, and it’s bracingly cold after the lingering summer temperatures. But if you happen to be up, and happen to be out, and happen to look up, there is an amazing moon-planet display going on. My cell phone is a sad, sad chronicler, I hesitated to even post a photo, but you can at least get a sense of the brightest of objects against a dark, dark sky. It makes you feel very small in a giant universe, but also very connected. I see the moon, and the moon sees me. Those stars, that moon, guided mariners, and the Underground Railroad, rules the ocean and is available for me to stare at every night.
4. Friends and family and coworkers whose stories we share. We’re part of a collective and it’s a great thing. We have people to whom we say and who say to us, “How did X go? What did Y say?” Sometimes we get absorbed in our own story, and they understand. Sometimes it’s about them, and we understand. But we’re part of a collective story, either in big roles or bit parts, and we each matter to the whole. We have stories and a language that only our coworkers understand, that only our best friends have the decoder ring for, that only our family can translate against the depth of their experience with us. It’s a wonderful Ven diagram of interlinking circles.
5. Introducing my own childhood to my children. The Boxcar Children. Banana boats — banana, peanut butter and cheese. It sounds disgusting. It’s not. The Princess Bride and Anne of Green Gables. Hersheytown chocolate chip cake, i.e., the reason bundt pans exist. Making Great-Grandma Rinehart’s sugar cookies (now great-great grandma Rinehart’s sugar cookies) with the same cookie cutters from my own childhood. These are the days, my friends. Past, present and future intertwined. As they get older, there are more and more memories I’m looking forward to sharing with them. And since flares and clogs are back again this season, I can feel comfortable that I’m introducing them to the very latest and greatest when I relive the past.
6. Italian lights. Is anything more relaxing than a string of Italian lights? They just make everything better.
   
7. Cherry tomatoes warm from the sun. Raspberries on sale for $.99 in the summer. Breakfast for dinner. Spinelli’s marinara tomato sauce. Peanut butter and honey. Port and dark chocolate. Chocolate and mint. Chocolate and cherry. Chocolate and …. well, chocolate, apparently. And the miracle of a crock pot when you walk in the door after a long day away.
8. Fridays.

Do you know that moment when your everyday life suddenly amazes you? You’re going around your routine, just like always, thinking about your gas tank being low and wishing you’d taken something out of the freezer the night before, because it looks like it’s either grilled cheese or take-out for dinner (again). And then suddenly, you look up and – where you are is spectacular. This happens a lot to me when I’m driving. First, because I should apparently pay more attention to the road and less to my internal monologue, and second, because we live in view of the Rocky Mountains and there are just certain times when you look up and think…. Oh. Right. I’m incredibly lucky.

Then there’s the German shepherd that rides the caretaker golf cart at the golf course I pass every morning. He looks like the most contented dog that every lived and never fails to make me smile. Bright flowers at the side of a worn path, the smell of summer barbeque on a balmy evening… These are the stop and take notice moments that slow us down a little. We become aware that the everyday parts of our lives are the best parts. And there’s another one that fits this bill for me, another moment when I suddenly have that heart tilting, hyper-focus clarity after the rush and hustle of every day. And that’s when – all of a sudden, despite sharing the same routine and house – I see my husband. He’s listening to a play-by-play summarization of Girl Meets World, or he’s sitting at the computer, glasses on, paying bills, or still, after so many years, he’s wrapping an arm around me as we figure out whether it’s grilled cheese or take-out. And I see him, not just as the other end of the carpool loop, and the other person in this house who knows how to load the dishwasher, but see him. Mountain view, single butterfly, first spring greens see.

I don’t mean to suddenly turn this into a syrupy Hallmark moment – and for my money, Folgers totally takes the cake on schmaltzy, holiday tear-jerkers. But, on this day when he first arrived on this blue and green planet, it seems well-timed for a little reflection.

My husband and I couldn’t be more different. We don’t like the same music, or the same movies. I don’t even really like movies very much. Well, that’s not true. I have to be cajoled into watching them, at which point I usually remember I do like movies, but I’m like Dory in Finding Nemo in this: this knowledge is lost as soon as it’s gained. We have some common ground – who doesn’t like a little classic rock from time to time – but it’s unlikely you’ll find us at a concert together. But when we do find some downtime we both enjoy, like settling in with Jon Stewart (curse you and your inability to do the same thing for 20 years, Jon Stewart!), or now Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, I think it means a little more. We’re swimming in intersecting loops on the same path, not unlike an infinity symbol, I’d like to think, and so the times when we cross are better for it.

For all our differences, we balance each other out. While I am Googling symptoms of mad cow disease and chronic fatigue syndrome, he is supergluing that awful looking cut he got on a dishwasher at work, and going out to mow the yard. The original believer in bringing the universe to your doorstep, he always assumes there will be a parking spot in the front while I profess to love incidental exercise. Our children are more independent because they have a father who believes that it’s their due to spread their wings, and they know how to work hard because he believes they can trench a sprinkler system, and certainly they can wash baseboards and tote landscape rock. We had different childhood experiences, and so we bring different perspectives to the parenting equation. I was a straight arrow. He was not. He will know what these children are thinking of thinking about before they do, whereas I’ll assume they’re in their rooms reading.

And so, while we’d never have to worry about sorting out our CD collection – that used to be a thing! Not that long ago! – in the ways that are deeper than pop culture references, I’ve found my match. We have the same world view, the same basic convictions. We want to impress upon our children that how you treat people represents you, and how you treat yourself defines you. It doesn’t matter how many common books we’ve read, or how many common longitude and latitudes we’ve seen, as long as we think the world of each other.

Marlowe and Bon Jovi both spoke of love as a bed of roses. And I think it couldn’t be more accurate, really. But where both of the aforementioned wordsmiths meant it as a peaceful respite, it’s not really so much a heap of silky petals as it is the petals and the scents and the layers and the thorns. Roses can be hothouse beauties, or they can be wild and hardy, resilient and beautiful even with their occasional sharp edges. After 12 years together, we’ve had petals, we’ve had thorns, and more than that, we have layers. I used to think that the term “partner” was the salutatorian to “spouse,” the term consigned to those who were either denied marriage, or just weren’t sure enough about it to make the leap. Today, I realize how foolish that was. A spouse, while incredibly meaningful, is created by a piece of paper. A partner is forged by a common goal. A partner is the person to whom you can always turn, no matter what. The real life trust fall – lost jobs, medical tragedies and crises of faith. It’s the person who never gives up on you, even when you have. The lucky can call their spouse partner, and I am the luckiest.

Happy birthday to my husband, my partner. You’re older than me again for the next 11 months. Let me know what the view is like from way up there on the number line.

“Are we really not having dinner?” my youngest asks.

It’s just the two of us, since my husband took our oldest to her weekly 2.5 hours of dance, and I got home specifically so that the little one wouldn’t have to go and hang out, but I’m still technically working. Although, anyone who has attempted to work from home with a child at your elbow knows that it means I’m really just splitting my attention between the 9-5 stuff that doesn’t really matter in any 5-year-view, and one of the shining, amazing people who absolutely matters the most, and by doing both jobs poorly, I am taking twice as long.

“Dinner? Um… you had a Clif bar,” I say. If I can just get these last two pages done, I’m done for today. Two. Pages.

“Is a Clif bar dinner?!,” she asks. Well… no. Of course not. Dinner is served with love, around a table, with family, and maybe a salad. It’s at least pancakes (breakfast for dinner! So FUN! And easy for mommy!) But… you seemed so happy eating the yogurt, and then the Clif bar, and then the clementine… I thought maybe we’d all just sort of forget no one made dinner. I had two-day old Chinese food in front of a computer. No one is winning here, little one!

I find that when I’m stressed, I do certain things habitually. I grip the steering wheel tightly when I’m driving. I blink less. Or at least, I must, because my eyes are dry as dust. Speaking of eyes, as I was leaving work today, my right eye twitched through the entire red light, as if in protest of the wasted time. Tick tock, tick tock, twitch tock.

Am I a Wall Street banker? Am I a neurosurgeon? Or maybe a hostage negotiator? No. No, I am not. Am I a mother of four who homeschools and runs a creative side venture after the kids are in bed? Nope. The stress I feel is really all self-imposed. Do I have a busy plate at work and two kids with near-daily scheduled events? Yes. Are there a dozen other parents on our street, a couple hundred in our neighborhood, millions across the country, doing the exact same dance throughout each week? Yep. Do I have a husband who shares the shuttling and knows his way around a mean marinade and how to carve a rotisserie chicken? Yep.

So why with the tick tock twitch? Why do I not have time to blink? Because I forget – it’s so easy to forget – that the minutes are so much more important than we acknowledge when we wish away red lights. It’s not about the next hand-off – home to work to oft-postponed lunch date to work to home to soccer, teeth, bed, you can read in your rooms for 20 minutes! – no, it’s not about the next hand-off, it’s about the next connection. It’s about the circle of people in our lives, not the timetables we’ve constructed to hold them. If we are those people who are always 4 minutes late to soccer warmups? Well, that’s why the coach builds in a full 20-minutes. We’re also the people who gathered with our neighbors to watch the blood moon eclipse, and who have silly modified high fives for special accomplishments, like putting away laundry. And if every now and then my child has a Clif bar for dinner? Well, people who climb mountains eat Clif bars, I’m told. I want you, sweet child, to climb mountains. And so instead of pancakes, you had a Clif bar. The peanut butter kind you love, because I love you. Because sometimes, momentarily – or at least, hopefully, temporarily – I forget that the only hostage in this scenario is me, and I just need to talk myself down. You demand slightly sticky hugs, a glass of wine and an indulgent family who gets you? We can arrange those for you. Sorry, the private plane to Salamanca is out of the question. Just let the hostage go.

It’s really tempting when life is going well to congratulate ourselves on our brilliance. It’s equally tempting when life seems to be falling apart to castigate ourselves for not holding it together. And it’s most tempting of all to compare, not just summits to valleys, but peak to peak. We’re standing over here on our own mountain with this birds-eye view of our neighbors’ thinking, I thought we had it together, but… maybe they have it more together. We managed to have dinner as a family at 7:30 after soccer… on paper plates because no one did the dishes last night. How, we ask, from our bystander perspective, can we compete with the garden-grown, self-milled feast plated by that girl we sat next to in college astronomy? Perspective. It’s hard, when you’re looking across at someone else’s mountain, to measure relative elevation. You’re thinking the point of this post should be that it’s not only difficult to compare peak to peak, apples to oranges, but also detrimental and pointless. Noted. And agreed. But not really my point.

Failure is my point. And before anyone points out to me that Gone with the Wind was rejected 38 times before it was published, or that Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, I would like to point out that I am not Margaret Mitchell or Michael Jordan. I’m really just trying to get through the day. And I suppose they were, too, before they became … who they became. And possibly even after.

Life, especially on a weekday morning, or evening, with two children, is a sprint. A good sprinter is a rare thing. It’s just not what we’re made for. The faster you’re going, the harder you go down, and who wants that? For every sprint hurdler, there are a dozen of us for whom haste just makes waste. But when I was washing my face this morning and took a slice out of my chin with my thumbnail? When I was emptying the soaking skillet of its stagnating overnight water, which sloshed over the side of the sink, onto my work pants and bare feet? I have to think, Really? Would this have happened to garden-fed astronomy girl? Of course not, because she probably cleanses her face only with coconut oil on an organic cotton ball, and would never let a sauté pan sit overnight, even on the shady pretext of “soaking” it.

Fall down 7 times, get up 8, they say. Failure is just opportunity in work clothes, they say. Oh, they say a lot of things. People don’t stop talking. That doesn’t mean you want to hear any of it when you’re standing in 12-hour-old dishwater. Because I had a meeting this morning that started 35 minutes prior to the school day, and I wanted to be proactively less late than more late, I sent the girls on their scooters so that they would arrive at the playground at the first possible staffed moment, after the 5-10 minutes it would take to get to school. “Text me when you get there,” I said. “Okay,” said my responsible oldest (I had just written her a letter of recommendation to be the class banker based on her maturity and responsibility, so I was pretty confident of our arrangement). “Is your phone charged?”  “Yes.” And on the way out the door, “Do you have your phone? Remember to text me.”  “Mom! I will.”

   Seven hours later.

All day I knew it was probably fine. It’s a direct route. The school didn’t call. No other parents called. The hospital didn’t call. And yet … someone who washed out sauté pans right after dinner, who hadn’t packed a hard-boiled egg for lunch — not out of portion control but out of a disorganized personal household food shortage — could probably get their children to school without incident. I mean, there was no incident. But there could have been. Potentially. Because I wanted to be less late to a meeting I was already late for.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in charge of Native American themed snack for my older daughter’s Girl Scout troop. I bought butternut squash, enough for 22, cooked it, and then left it out until 3am, when I remembered, sat straight up in bed and moved it to the fridge. “It’s fine,” my husband said. “I’m going to have to agree with Patrick,” my co-worker said. “It’s squash. Can it even go bad?” said my friend. “I’ll get all new,” I said. And I got enough butternut squash for 22. Again. Of course, enough squash for 22 servings, and enough squash for 22 9-year-olds, is a very different thing. And so…. I had a LOT of butternut squash (and the first batch was just fine, btw; we ate it; it’s squash, what could go bad?). I ate butternut squash pretty much three meals a day for, well, days. Butternut waffles. Butternut pancakes. Mashed butternut with fruit puree. Roasted with a little honey… Some of it went better than others.

 

Tonight, spring rolls. “Hm. Have you done this before?” “Nope.” “Are they supposed to be falling apart like that?”

Yes. Yes they are. Because they’re made with rice paper. Who in their right mind would even begin a meal, on a Thursday night, that begins with rice paper? Truman Capote said that failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. We used peanut sauce. But, whatever. Equally valid.

There are so many little times during the day that we think, !!!Shoot. …Or, Well, if I had those ten seconds back… We’re broadcasting in stark HD on our own mountain, but the image is a lot more forgiving from a distance. Rudyard Kipling called out both Triumph and Disaster as imposters, and of course he was right. For every omelet that suddenly becomes a good scramble… well, who doesn’t love a good scramble? Our failures don’t define us, thank goodness. Our successes are as good as the next starting gun. Both come and go. But our perspective… over which we have the most control… that’s really what it comes down to. It’s jarringly high def, for sure. But it’s also brilliantly, palpably real. Not always pretty. But substantial and ours.

And so, what have we learned, other than a dozen ways to prepare squash? Slow down a little. Sprinting doesn’t shorten the distance, just the journey. Wash your face carefully, and make children responsible for dinner clean-up (it’s fun! bubbles! steel wool! bubbles!). I’ll put my crumbling spring rolls up against any garden-to-table dinner without fear (in principle… not specifically head-to-head…) And I’ll have a delightful spring roll scramble for tomorrow’s lunch.

 

 

This morning, I had an awful run. I knew it from about a minute in. I never found a good breathing rhythm and it just felt difficult. To add to it, when I ran on Thursday evening in the neighborhood around my daughter’s soccer practice, I passed three snakes. Which I was not okay with. There was a 99% chance they were harmless bull snakes, but I wasn’t discounting that they could be rattle snakes. Running could literally kill me.

This morning, I was running a usual route, but by the time I had crossed through the local park and was running up the hill that would take me home, I had to literally stop, put my hands on my thighs and wheeze. Had I passed someone in the same condition, I’d have probably felt it in violation of my Girl Scout first aid training to pass by. Luckily, no one did pass by. Add to it that every stick and leaf resembled a snake… In the end, my run was a little faster than usual, perhaps because I was just so anxious to get home before I embarrassed myself. It’s fine, I was thinking in those final minutes; I’m running at altitude. Me and Kara Goucher. I could totally rock a run at sea level. Stretching out at home, however, I still felt heavy chested, like I wasn’t getting quite enough air. “It’s allergy season, you’re probably a little congested,” my husband said. “You’re stressed out; you haven’t been sleeping well. You’re tired.”

As a practiced and practicing hypochondriac, though, I knew better than to accept such pedestrian explanations, and so I Googled “heart attack symptoms in women” immediately. “Are you serious?” asked my husband, as I took the heart attack risk factor quiz. The American Heart Association thinks I have a 1% chance of a heart attack. “Right,” said husband. “Physically, you’re perfectly healthy.” He’s a patient, loving man.

And so, like the stick, like the curling dried leaf pod on the sidewalk, is not a snake (99%), my wheezing run during allergy season, up a decent hill, is not a heart attack (99%). Hypochondria aside, how many times have we, with wi-fi at our fingertips, Googled something out of fear? That ridiculously giant, hairy spider in the garage. Bee stings. Radon. Donald Trump poll standings. Sometimes we research to assure ourselves of our own reasonable logic, and sometimes because we honestly would rather rely on a crowd-sourced Wikipedia article than ask a professional to answer what we might not want to know. And yet, how often is the stick a snake? Sure, the possiblity shouldn’t be discounted. There’s an evolutionary reason that we don’t seek snakes out, and I’m happy to comply. But most often, the stick is a stick.

I can’t say how much time I’ve spent on worry. It’s both more and less than it used to be. I’ve learned, for the most part, how to recognize when I go down a rabbit hole. Okay, so I took the American Heart Association quiz. But then I (pretty much) moved on. Reassured in my own logic. I took a class on anxiety a few years ago, and one thing the leader recommended was looking at the very worst case scenario of our fear, and realizing we could probably live with it. At the time, of course, I thought, that’s horrible advice. The worst case scenario? Death, apocalyptic chaos! But eventually, as you work through fears, you realize that death and apocalyptic chaos are pretty unlikely. Which brings us to pragmatic fears. Should I let my child ride her bike on the neighborhood streets? Will that helmet protect her? Do we have enough in savings to cover a medical emergency? A job loss? Will I be here to see all my children’s milestones? Their childrens’? These fears don’t send me to Google. They’re a different type. But they do encourage me, every day, to do better. Just a little better. To run even on mornings that feel heavy, to have a salad, to really listen when my child tells me a long and convoluted story about recess when I really just want to read, uninterrupted.

Fear can motivate, for sure. And surprise us into running a little faster; we can use it, channel it, to live a little deeper day by day… so that in that 1% when it really is a snake, we’re not paralyzed, but ready.

But to be clear, if it is a snake, not cool.

   Example: Not a snake.

Hey, remember that one time that I changed my entire lifestyle to holistically banish chronic idiopathic urticaria? (For those that need a refresher, that’s medical speak for inexplicable, random hives…) When I gave up wheat and sugar and birthday cake and my work bff’s acclaimed homemade cupcakes? And brought home Girl Scout cookies and Fazoli’s breadsticks and high-season fresh sweet corn, and didn’t eat any of it? Remember? Not to spoil the rant here, but… the hives are back. Back in the way that the flu circles an elementary school. You think you’re home-free, you think you made it, and then… wham. Back like the way the warranty department for your 5-year-old vehicle pretends for a few months that they listened when you said, Seriously. Stop calling. And then, just as you can no longer quite identify their number on caller ID… What. the. heck. I thought we were through!  But… we’re back.

The seasons are changing, so there are more allergens in the air, for sure. This is a completely unscientific hive hypothesis on my part. When I first got hives, it was in transient March. Sweet, simple, uncomplicated March 2014… at happy hour, unseasonably warm, so we sat outside and I had caprese salad, because I was still eating dairy, and … huh. What’s that weirdness on my wrist and hand? Probably nothing. Probably just a little contact dermatitis… How little I knew. And yes, I remember what I ate. Don’t judge me.

And so, after 9 months or so of hivey, defeatist self-indulgence, I started making the changes chronicled in this very blog. Ironically, the only time I’ve been getting hives in the past 6 months or so is when I exercise. Thanks for that, body. You’re a real team player. But the random, wake up in the morning with weirdly symmetrical hives down my legs and up my arms? It felt like that corner had been turned.

But now, as I look at the 8 small hives currently on my wrist, and 3 on the back of my hand, I think 1) that’s not so bad. Not ideal, but not so bad. This I can handle. This is not defining. This is not bad luck, it just is, and it’s a molehill to the mountains others are climbing. And 2) compared to March 2014, now I have hives on a body that feels better, is a little stronger, a little leaner. I’m not saying I’m drinking champagne about it. There’s no welcome committee. A few new hives weren’t in the plan, and I’m not thrilled. Maybe by the time Starbucks packs up their pumpkin spice, they’ll be gone again, or maybe they’ll stay through the holidays like that last guest at the party. Regardless, I’m living more today than I was before they arrived way back when. I’m carving out more time, making better choices. Maybe a few hives are a reminder that it’s a journey, not a race, and not a stagnant destination.

When I first noticed new hives this week, I immediately took a picture of them, and sent it to my mom. Why do you do that, my oldest daughter asked. Children are observant. It’s a good lesson to learn early in parenthood. Why do I do that? Why does my mother have the photo archives of a WebMD page? Because it’s a molehill, and a footnote, and it’s all part of the journey. Because I have well-earned wisdom gained through adversity. But I gave up breadbaskets and birthday cake! And who will always treat your molehill as a mountain? Who will  sympathize and soothe?  And not block your texts? No matter how old you get, Sam, and no matter your molehills, or your mountains, I promise to do the same for you.

 

  A couple of weeks ago, I realized that I still had a block of emails from last year’s teachers in my Inbox. While we loved last year’s teachers, it didn’t seem entirely necessary to hold on to their reminders about 2014 field trips and fundraisers. I started by deleting those emails, and then, email sorted by sender, I began several tangential trips down memory lane. I’ve had this email for a LONG time, and while I don’t use it for every day communication as much as I did ten years ago, it’s a treasure trove of reminiscence.

In honor of “Throw Back Thursday,” I thought I would share a “day-in-the-life” email written to my mother from early 2011 (don’t worry, Mom, I’ve redacted anything incriminating).  Certainly, my life 4.5 years ago resembled my life today. Two kids to get out the door on time, work, dinner… While I may have realized our lives were changing, I can’t help but notice that that routine had no soccer, dance, Girl Scouts, musical practice or homework. My children were ages 3 and 4 (during that part of the year that Eva revels in being just a year younger). Reading this now, and looking at my 7 and 9 year old, it makes my heart smile to remember when our lives were a little less structured; and my heart is full for the present, while we try a smorgasbord of the new, figuring out passions and talents and what’s worth juggling; and to look ahead to a future that likely resembles our current lives… getting out the door on time, work, dinner… but so much yet to be written. Que será, será… with a little nudge from the seeds we plant today.

And that said, #TBT, April 1, 2011:

This morning, before 5, I was vaguely aware of stirring in the girls’ room, and as the TV clicked on to Magic School Bus, I felt more than said a quick, earnest prayer that these events would not impact me for at least another hour. And sure enough, nearly an hour later, Samantha appeared at the foot of the bed, stage whispering, Mom! Mom! Some children would do this right at your ear, but in our house, there’s generally a 140 pound dog at the foot of the bed which makes for an imposing hurdle, even for a child as typically forthright and bossy as Sam.

Mom! I’m dressed, but I need a necklace! She says. I squint one eye open and note that she’s wearing the size 12/14 dress that was most recently her cousin’s, despite the fact that she is, in fact, a 4-5T. The dress is a white tank top with a black elastic waist and pink ruffled skirt. She loves it. It goes down to mid-calf. We tend to the necklace situation, and about four minutes into my shower, there’s a muffled voice at the shower door.

What?

More muffled questioning.

What?

I crack open the shower door.

Can I get Eva and I tomatoes for breakfast?

Sure, I say. And close the….. nope. She’s gone. The bathroom door swinging wide behind her. Sigh.

Twenty minutes later, I’m looking for socks for both girls in their terribly messy sock, underwear, leggings and tights drawer – someone should really organize that – as Eva is swinging one foot idly into my backside. Booty butt, booty butt, booty butt, she sings. I’m not sure whether to take offense at this or not. I’ve never really been accused of such a thing, but it’s kind of in these days, too… I also kind of wonder why my 3-year-old is singing this to me, but I feel like I don’t have the time or energy to search for those answers. As Eva moves on, she trips over a plastic egg crate of her toys, scratching the heel of her foot. TEARS!

Mommy!  I see bleed!!

I investigate. It’s more superficial than originally reported. A band-aid solves it.

Samantha arrives on the scene, throws her hair and places one hand on her hip, waiting expectantly.

You look nice, Sam, I say dutifully.

She tosses her hair again. Lord save us from the precociousness of a nearly 5-year-old.

Your shoes are on the wrong feet, Sam.

She looks down, the LED lights flashing.  “Oh.”  She disappears.

Coffee. Thank god for coffee. Eva’s having a pop tart at the kitchen counter when Patrick announces it’s time to leave for school.

No!!! she wails. I want to take it!

The pop tart?

No!!!!

The counter?

Yes. I want it.

Eva, you can’t take the counter with you. How about taking the pop tart instead?

She seems to realize that this is going to be an easier battle to win, and the tears stop.

I gather up my lunch, my coffee, my gym bag, my purse, check for my phone…. And then set them all down again while I go in search of my jacket. Except that my foot catches on the handle of the plastic Safeway bag my lunch is in, snagging my heel which then comes straight down on a plastic cup of diced peaches which somehow turns itself into a water cannon, and amazingly sprays peaches across the room while shooting peach juices mostly straight up the leg of my jeans…

But at least it wasn’t the coffee.

THAT would have been tragic.

#

In 2015, I can’t drink coffee anymore… Sad. I’m glad 2011 me didn’t know that yet.

Birthdays. Some will rock you. Some will define you. Some will bury you, and then, like pressurized coal, you’ll be stronger and brighter for them. Some slip by without much notice. And the more we have the better, generally speaking. Someone told me this week, Congratulations! You’ve successfully navigated three dozen years of living! My first reaction was, um, ouch. Fair, but… I don’t think anyone needs their age added up by dozens. But my second reaction was, Yes. I damn well have. I’ve done it far from perfectly. To borrow a recent phrase from columnist Connie Schultz, no one wants to be defined by their greatest mistakes. And so we’ll skip over those, for the most part, “the dues one pays for a full life.” 36 years means you’ve had some valleys and some peaks, and it’s a sum total game.

Birthdays inevitably send you both backward and forward in time. Childhood birthdays with cousins around the table, and birthday cakes shaped like ball gowns and castles. My 18^th birthday – a freshman at college – and my brand new college roommate ordered a pizza and put candles on it. It’s no wonder I still love her still today. And a few years later, my 21^st birthday, with the same roommate, who’d arrived at the same place a few months before me. Such different celebrations, just a few years apart, and yet so much living in between them. I’d lived away from home, and then away from the United States, fallen in love with Britain and quite possibly with a Brit, had left both to come back home where, to figure things out, I’d dyed my hair dark red and then blonde. I made plans, had them fall apart, and made new plans.

Once you have children, birthdays change, and not just because you’re now too tired to go out to celebrate, and even if you weren’t, it’s hard to find a babysitter past 10pm, and even if you could, who has the money after adulting for just long enough to acquire a mortgage, car payments and daycare. Birthdays change once you have children because you begin to account for time differently. You, yourself, feel like you’ve felt since you were 19 or so. Well, maybe 23. Once a year, you acknowledge that chronologically, you’re moving farther down the number line, but occasionally you have to do the math to remember exactly how old you are. Your children are the ones who are changing dramatically in front of you. They are the ones who remind us how fast time is actually going, and how it matters how we spend our individual days, because far too quickly, they become years for them, even while we, essentially, remain  23. Or certainly no more than 30.

And so, for this, the first year of my fourth dozen, I’m going to make a real effort to remember that the days go quickly, and that we don’t get them back. I’m going to take the time to smile over the people who stopped to wish happy birthdays, because they have made up so much of my sum total. How lucky I am to have a complex, beautiful web of friends and family who make up such disparate parts of my life, and yet who have marked it so indelibly.

Here’s to Year 36.

More bike rides, more dancing in the kitchen, more sitting on the front porch to watch the sun go down. Fewer knee-jerk reactions and rushes to judgement. More paring down clutter, mind and body, and more decisions that say, I’ll never be 36 again, so let’s do it right.