Month: October 2015

I’ve gotten a lot of advice over the years. I imagine everyone has. And I’ve given my fair share, as well, I’m sure. Probably more than I even realize, because when we’ve been through something ourselves, we really, really want to impart that knowledge somewhere, or else why did we go through it? What’s the point of slogging through the hard stuff if no one wants to hear our wisdom and save themselves the same heartaches, or at least be inspired by our bravery and fortitude?

The crux of advice, though, is that when we need it most, we probably don’t want it, don’t want to need it. Or, as author Erica Jong once said, “Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.” Or, we get good advice but at bad times, and so we contort it, clinging to it. When I about 22, I called my grandmother, crying from the side of the road at the airport in Pittsburgh. I’d left my fiancé at the passenger drop-off to go to a job he claimed he hated because it kept us apart, and he was tired of being on the road 3 weeks out of each month (in retrospect, his being on the road 3 weeks a month probably kept us together). “If you love someone, life is too short to be apart,” my grandmother said. And it was such a romantic idea that I called him and told him I’d pick him up right then and there, possibly not exactly what my grandmother had meant. And I did, and we joyously went out to celebrate, heedless of the income we’d just lit on fire, and of the rules of professional behavior that dictate some notice before just not getting on a plane.

It wasn’t that my grandmother, one of the wisest people I’ve known, gave me bad advice. It’s just that I took it out of all context, because advice is like that – we hear what we want to hear – and embraced it like the last life boat on the Titanic. And truly, that ship was already going down. Months later, when I called my best friend sobbing on the penultimate day before my wedding (there was a lot of crying in those days; not a great sign, really) as she drove across the country to be a bridesmaid, it wasn’t the first time that she expressed some concerns about the upcoming marriage, while my mother said, “All we lose now, Rebecca, are deposits.”  In retrospect, advice I could have taken to heart. I did better the second time.

But we have to make our own mistakes, after all, even when everyone around us, and perhaps even ourselves, can see them coming from miles – or months – away. Mistakes are part of the dues we pay for a full life, Sophia Loren said, and if you can’t take life advice from an Italian screen siren, who can you trust? Let’s just say I’ve made some doozies, and not for lack of good advice.

I recently went to a baby shower, my first in years. It’s funny how a few years and a few thousand diapers and equal cuddles and some stitches (theirs) and tears (mine) can change your perspective. Parenthood is a condescending clique at times. We don’t mean to be, always. Sometimes we do. But life does change when you become a parent. This is not to say that choosing not to be a parent is a lesser choice. In fact, owning that choice, with its lifetime of well-intentioned, weirdly-personal questions, is pretty fearless, and there are days when I will outright envy the freedom, and the money, you have to jaunt to locales more exotic than Chuck E Cheese.

Weddings and baby showers are really classic places for both solicited and unsolicited advice. It’s tradition to have a fishbowl or fancy-wrapped present in which to put pearls of wisdom for the bride and groom. In that moment when you’re just starting out as a married couple, there is probably a mountain of good advice to take to heart. And yet, in that moment, we think we’re on top of it. We are the exuberant cake topper couple, smiling ear to ear in this frozen moment. When we realize that maybe we could use a little bit of outside wisdom, the wedding affects are boxed up in a far corner of the crawl space where there are bound to be spiders. And again, we make our own mistakes, and then give others advice about it later.

At the baby shower, there a number of women in attendance who had children long since grown, and there was also a brand new mother, with her brand new month-old baby. We agreed that every baby shower should have a tiny baby there. It makes the whole process seem pretty legit, and makes for adorable photos.

As the shower was wrapping up, we were asked to go around the room and give advice to the mom-to-be. Most of the older women in the room, who for the record are amazing women with amazing life stories and are extremely nice, love the mom-to-be and have watched her grow up, said versions of the same thing. Enjoy every minute. Savor the short time you have with this miraculous baby. This is absolutely true. The years since I’ve become a parent have flown by. My oldest daughter is taller than my shoulder, and with my youngest, we have to do a very elaborate and choreographed lift, like Ice Capades, for me to still be able to pick her up. I sometimes get a little bit of the feels when I watch that Subaru commercial where the daughter grows up, right before our eyes, and then drives away in the Subaru she grew up with. Some days when I drop my daughters off at school, and watch as they transfer from me, to the crossing guard, to their own paths (literal paths) for the school day, I totally get it. I sit there and feel tears coming. I drive away and keep them in my rear view mirror as long as possible, knowing that one day – and it will come soon – I’ll be in theirs. It feels impossibly, exquisitely painful. And this is just me on a random Monday.

Again, though, giving and getting advice is complicated. With absolutely no disrespect, a new mother needs more faceted advice than to simply savor the moment. And this is where it gets a little more complex than a Subaru commercial. Retrospective advice has the amazing weight of experience, but also the soft focus of years. To be told, as an anticipatory mother, to hold on to each moment as much as you can, to love the late night chances to soothe and comfort, is a truth a parent realizes as soon as their child is born. It’s a truth so huge, it knocks the breath out of you. But 6-months ago, that that mother was able to leave the house in five minutes flat, showered and with hair that was only in a pony-tail because she chose it. Parenting is so hard. It’s about marveling about every eyelash and tiny toe, but also about being peed on, and oh-so-carefully peeling off a ruined one-use onesie after your teeny, tiny volcano explodes. It’s about a new dynamic, good but different and sometimes hard, with your partner, and feeling like you’ll never leave the house on time again, or sleep again. Or not know fear again. To tell a new mother only to savor the experience, without also saying, And some days you will feel lost and alone and yet be totally touched out when your husband gets home, is unfinished advice.

Advice is almost always fragmentary, though, isn’t it? It’s filtered through our own experience, through time, through the lens by which we live our life, our regrets and our triumphs, to say nothing of the desire to validate our own mistakes by saving another from them, even when those mistakes are theirs to make.

And yet… what advice would I give my own children? Because obviously I keep a growing list: Don’t worry too much about your successes in life before you’re 18. Or even 25. Those are just testing grounds. Live alone at some point (I never did). Never let anyone define your self-worth, and don’t doubt your intuition. But make sure you court doubt about science and religion and relationships and politics, because anyone without doubts hasn’t spent enough time thinking. And then believe in something big enough to keep your focus and forward trajectory when you’re ignoring all my good advice, and making those mistakes we all saw coming.

I’m not saying that we should give up on advice. We have a need to give it, and sometimes it may even wing its way into someone’s heart just exactly when they need it. But there’s a reason that we have so many cartoons with gurus sitting on top of mountains. We’re all searching. In the end, though, we’ve climbed the mountain ourselves, haven’t we? The guru is only there to award points. Maybe instead of giving advice, we can just share our experiences and let the words fall where they may, and be there for our people in the meantime.

That’s what I would do… if I were you.

 

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.