Valentine's Day thoughts & wishes

I have learned that, for better and for worse, not every patch of my life should be shared online. 

And I have learned that as complicated as my life can sometimes be, there are lives holding more than I'll ever know, and I should be humble. 

I have discovered, to my dismay, that all my dreams will not come true. 

And to my distinct pleasure, I've discovered that great happiness can reside in very tiny everyday things. 

But most of all, I've long been aware that there is no greater pleasure than to be truly known, heard & loved. So on this Valentine's Day, I send deep gratitude to those who have gifted me in that profound way, whether in knowing and loving me for the person I truly am, or allowing me to know and love them. I send you loving gratitude ~ ♥

“Pre-Cursers” - That Moment When Your Little One’s Language Takes A Big Turn

            “Mommy,” my three-year old son pipes from his car seat behind me, “Did you know that beavers live in a dam?”

            “That’s right.”

            “They live in a dam,” he repeats. Giggles. While I can’t see his round, curl-framed face in the rearview mirror I can see my daughter, three years older and one seat over, looking at him with an admiring, deep-dimpled grin.

            Oh! He had learned the old curse word that actually doubles as a word that is “appropriate.”  Ha!

            Since I was a teenager I have fully embraced the release that a beefy-mouthed curse provides in moments of frustration and anger (sorry, Mom). But all cursing in my home had been suspended with the arrival of my kids; as little as I had known about childrearing, observations of the brave souls who had spawned before me had taught me that babes pick up everything, right out of the womb.

So although I had laughed my butt off as a kid watching The Bad News Bears characters continuously f-bombing each other and Coach Buttermaker (and got in trouble for laughing when I got home – come on Mom, you were the one who took me to that movie!), when I got older the occasional specter of real little tykes uttering obscenities struck me as off-putting. My Personal Cursing Guideline:  There’s plenty of time for cursing after childhood – say, from the teen years on.

            It was when my husband and I went out alone, far out of earshot of our kids, that we would let loose (ok, it was mostly me), using that same exaggerated inflections my son had used when saying dam: “How the f- are ya! Sh-, did you hear about such and such…? Wow, that really sucked!”   

            As careful as we had been around our children, I realized that the shape shifting “damn/dam” had slickly slipped through the cracks. Though amused that the kids had already caught on to this, I refrained from laughing so as not to encourage them (see Personal Cursing Guideline above).  I had to address the issue, but I also knew that even at their young ages I had to play it cool.

I say:  “Ok, there’s a dam that’s a beaver’s home and there’s a damn that’s a curse. We don’t use the curse word, got it?” [Dramatic Pause For Effect.] “It’s inappropriate and it makes adults mad.” (I left out the part about how mad adults very much like to use it.)

            I craned my neck for a better view of both kids in the rearview mirror and could see them still smiling at each other, chubby-cheeked, as they said uttered a weak and thoroughly unconvincing, “Yeeeeesss.” 

I wondered if the little sponges had picked up on my subtext; for though I had studied English in college and have an Inner Grammarian holding court in the reading/writing lobes of my brain, my mischievous Inner Word Lover and Sometimes Poet loves to skewer, skin and sculpt words into new forms. It’s this part of me that takes tremendous amusement in the word damn’s phonetic contortions. For example:

            There is The Loud, Hot Damn of Anger:

“Damn it!” (Var. Dang it, Darn it.)

“Damn you!”

“Damn-it-to-hell!”

           

There is The Damn of Awe that  s l o w l y  exits the mouth trailed by an ellipsis:

“Damn…”

“Hot damn…”

“Well I’ll be damned…”

Then there are those Demographically Designed Damns and Other Cursing Combos that endlessly tickle the funny bone of my Inner Word Lover and Sometimes Poet:

“Got-damn-it!” and “DAYUM!” Such satisfying southern twists!

“Dag nabbit!” Ye olde Warner-Brothers’ sly solution to cartoon cursing.

“Don’t be sech a dayum foo’!” Current slang doesn’t hold a candle to old standbys like one.

Even my father, who lost his ability to speak following a massive stroke, is able to eek out his own protracted version of the word:

“Damn-in-in-in!” (The fact that my son had not said, “Beavers live in dam-in-in-in,” gave my father an instant pass as a person who did NOT teach my kids the curse.)

Bar none, some of the most fun I ever had cursing was as a kid, joining in with my brothers, cousins and friends to shout the newest bad words we were learning in the very old ‘Name Game’ song: 

“DAMN IT, DAMN IT, bo bammit. Banana-fanna fo fammit. Fee-fi-fo mammit. DAMN IT!”

Ok, I’m busted; so much for having lived that Personal Guideline of mine. I guess I’ve been embracing the release of a good ol’ curse for longer than I care to admit. And naturally, until something else had caught their attention my kids continued using “beaver dam.” Each time they said it, I have to admit to chuckling on the inside. On the outside, I get miles and miles out of retelling that dam story.

To the parent of a child entering college: The most beautiful words ever written just for you

My daughter, my eldest child, is leaving the nest. Boxes of her clothes, dorm supplies and toiletries line the hallway to the front door that she had first entered a little over 18 years ago; eight pounds and eight ounces of baby wrapped in a lamb-speckled blanket, topped off with a hospital-issue knit cap. My girl.

Except my girl is a young woman, and the young woman is leaving home as everything I could ever want her to be:  Intelligent, funny, motivated, resourceful. When it comes to the business of life she's got laser focus (she earned 27 college credits through her AP high school courses - and the University she's attending has accepted all of them). When it comes to the lighter side of life she lives it heartily, zestfully, with the joyous abandon that creates life-enhancing experiences.

So I'm really not worried about her adjusting to college life, problem-solving during tough times, or being accountable for the mistakes she will undoubtedly make. I feel as confident as a parent possibly can that she is going to be ok.

What's tough right now is dealing with how much I'm going to miss my daughter. Sure, there were a few months this year - especially while we were waiting for responses from the schools to which she had applied - that her stress levels caused me to make all kinds of declarations about how she was definitely ready for college - in fact she needed to get out, get some perspective, develop some respect for me and my husband.

But the fact is, I'm going to miss speaking to her in person every day. I'm going to miss her stories, our jokes, our shared observations about people and life. I'm going to miss her whirling dervish entrances and exits - even the fact that she's always leaving mounds of clothing, splashes of water, wispy piles of make-up caked tissues, half-filled coffee cups, and all kinds of wrappers in her wake.

So I mentioned very briefly, on facebook, how separating is "tough stuff," and I added a "sniffle" for  emphasis. And what I received in return were some of the most beautiful words I have ever read on the topic of a child leaving the nest from my friend Stephan Anstey, who has two kids in college. He wrote:

"Oh yes. It most surely is [tough]. But .. it is life. It is love. It is hope. And hope full. it is a thing without measure in the beauty of it. It is a moment to treasure as this creature you created becomes this being they choose to be. Cry my friend, cry but do not weep, but for the joy of seeing such a great good miracle unfold before your eyes. Remember the moment you heard the heartbeat and wondered who this might be? THIS is who. This is the why and how and the awe of it. For years, you have been the mother of a child, and now you can see that you are the mother of something so much more than you imagined that could mean. It is so hard, but it isn't hard at all. It is all of your greatest hopes realized. This is all of the best of you exploding into the world like magic fire blazing across your sky. 

"So ... cry, because you should, but let the tears be joyful and your heart be light. That dream you dreamed so long ago, the best dream of your whole life, it was no dream at all, but this moment, this beautiful moment foretold in your heart." 

I have read and reread these words, and have wept (with joy and hope and gratitude) and wept. For though I have on some level understood that everything that's happening right now is unfolding exactly as I had hoped it would it in the proverbial circle of life, I had not understood any of the nuances of my feelings. Stephan had teased out the emotions in all of their brilliance.

I can't thank him enough except to share his words with others, and to say go check out his website www.Anstey.org and get to know him and his excellent writing better. Plus he's on facebook and he tweets and all that good stuff.

Thank you, Stephan!


    

7 Tips to Help New Moms Deal with "Negative Crap"

This morning I was drawn to my cousin's facebook post: "Being a parent teaches you the true definition of love." I hit the "comment" button to agree, but then I read a response from one of her friends:

"So true. How hard is it with two? People keep telling me such negative crap. It's scaring the heck out of me."

That took me back - nearly 18 years back, to be exact, when I had my first child, my girl, and my first experience with what felt like assaults on my very soul - the "negative crap" that no new Mom needs.

I got it from my Mom: "I told you you'd wind up with a c-section... Don't you think you should supplement with formula? You should make more noise around the baby so she's used to it. Oh, my God, why do they give so many vaccines so young?"

My mother-in-law, while on the phone one room away: "I don't know; I think she should feed her cereal... Go out more and leave the baby here... I don't know what she's doing..."

Family: "What kind of a first name for a girl is that? The baby doesn't sleep well because she carries her so much - and why does she have to carry her face out? So weird..."

Friends: "Stay away from household chemicals... Feed her organic foods, use organic cotton sheets... Formula is poison..."

Even our first pediatrician, within days of my delivery: "You're just not a milk producer; give up the breastfeeding and start giving her formula."

It was a clash of generational thinking, olde world vs progressive world with generous helpings of outright thoughtlessness. It was an onslaught not so much of advice as directives from people who meant well, but rarely asked what I wanted - or took the time to get to know my baby as she was (and still is, to this day). It was a lot of negative crap, and it was really, really hard on me.

Can you relate?

A people pleaser and a young woman with very little self-confidence, it took every ounce of my energy to feel my way to methods and routines that were right for me and my baby girl. At times I felt like it was me vs my "village," which felt all wrong. At times I was very depressed.

So this is what I wound up writing on my cousin's facebook page this morning, fleshed out here with some additional thoughts. If you're a new Mom - or a Mom who's expanding her family - dealing with a lot of negative crap, I hope these ideas are helpful, and that they give you some measure of comfort and confidence:

1) Don't let too much of the negative in, and try not to take everything personally. This is much more easily said than done; it's about your baby, for goodness sake! It's all personal! And then there are your hormones readjusting themselves, and new emotions, and...ai-yi-yi! It's a lot of sensitive stuff.

That said, try to remember that those who are advising you, even in irritating, judgmental or arrogant ways, are people who really do love you and your child. So try to create a filter that separates what they have in their hearts from what they're saying (through their egos) that rubs you the wrong way. Try to keep your heart open to receive their love, and to consider their advice in the realms of your brain - where you have the final say-so.

2) Follow your instincts, knowing that YOU know your baby better than anyone else. Certainly learn from others and from reading, knowing that whatever choices you make, when you act from a place of love (in the very best interests of your baby's health and happiness), you are doing things "right."

In the case of my daughter, here are a few of many things I understood about her that bear out to this day: She's got super-sensitive, can-hear-a-dust-mote-drop ears (making "noise" around her was never a good idea if I wanted her to get sleep). She had a sensitive tummy - she never liked to be pressed against people when held, and she rarely crawled. So holding her face-forward was a kindness to her, as was having her sleep on her side and not her belly (as some olde world babysitters kept insisting despite SIDS warnings and my daughter's obvious discomfort). And the nearly non-existent crawling (that some people in my village got so crazy about)? Well, years later she had some occupational therapy with a little bit of physical therapy to make up for lags in those departments. By her own admission she's no athlete, but today she is doing just fine.

3) When you make mistakes, as we all do, forgive yourself Keep in mind that by example, you are teaching your child how to handle such moments.

4) Remember to tend to yourSELF. Our children have invisible cords of connection to our minds, hearts and souls. Your self care matters now and throughout your lifetime w/ your child, from so many different angles.

5) A great partner helps, but...if yours doesn't "get it" - doesn't have the same instincts that you have - try to communicate what you know with kindness, clarity and patience. Acknowledge when your partner DOES get it. Acknowledge when your partner comes up with a better way to do things! Remember that your children are always watching how you treat each other.

6) When you need an assist, whether from your partner or someone else, be sure to ASK. Women often feel like they should always be able to handle everything themselves, and that just isn't so. Especially after birth or the rigors of the adoption process, you need time to heal, adjust to the 24 hour-a-day thinking and feeling you now do for your wee one(s), explore and grow into your identity as a parent. These are things we mostly do without thinking about them - but they're better done when we're not too often and too consistently overtired, overwhelmed, and feeling unsupported.

7) Be a good "villager." I think we need to revisit the "it takes a village" approach and, to be a good member of our village, we need to stop judging each other's parenting skills - and be mindful of when we are the ones dispensing negative crap. All it takes, in my opinion, is to simply offer the best we can to each other and our children with boundless compassion and open minds.

Whether you are expecting, have a newborn or are expanding your family, I wish all you Mamas a very happy day! <3

Treading Where I've Never Been Before

Exponential learning curve here. As a parent, that's how it goes sometimes, right? We think and do things one way and then stuff happens, blowing it all right out of the water and into a new structure. The miracle is that somehow, the new structure generally works.

I'm at that point that parents know is coming...eventually...yet never actually expect: We're hunting for a college for my daughter. As many things as we've done together as mother-daughter and as a family, after visiting only one college this feels completely different.

The push-pull of my daughter is keen. One minute she's loudly calling me a "weirdo" because I asked someone on campus for directions, the next she's looking at me with the same open gaze she had when she was a wee one watching my every move.

I give her wide berth - let the insults roll off my back as often as possible, adjust whatever mood I'm in to a soft-love whenever I see those big eyes, focused yet relaxed, briefly-kindly taking me in. Our best and worst parts are splayed like old game pieces strewn across an all-new board in our game of life, and I feel like I'm trying to figure out how to set up the pieces so that everyone wins.

The new terrain my daughter and I are forging runs parallel to new terrain I'm forging within myself. As our family's cancer experience came to a punctuation point of good news, I dared to take my eyes off of my husband and put them on yours truly.

(insert silent scream here)

"Hello, 1-800-CompleteLifeChange? Help me!"

Drastic changes were needed inside and out. While my husband had undergone surgeries and treatment I'd let my body go completely - after having lost significant weight. I'd not nourished myself with any manner of soul or brain food. I felt much older than I had before my husband had been diagnosed, and it was a bit scary - heaviness, aches, my new very slow pace.

All of a sudden I clearly saw the life-long excuses and childish habits I'd allowed to run amok, sabotaging both unique opportunities and everyday moments to be productive, have fun, and build a legacy of which my children can be proud. All of a sudden I realized I had to stop my senseless rebellions against now non-existent demons and grow myself up.

Cliche twelve-step lines such as, "If it's meant to be it's up to me," made mad-crazy sense, as did that song lyric that goes something like, "You've got to live like you're dying." Too true; I now know firsthand that really-truly-ooly, "You never know."

So I'm back to belly dance (love it!). I've joined a running clinic where I am the slowest person in the worst shape - and it's ok. I joined Creative Every Day on January 1 of this year, and while I don't check in with the group regularly I do manage to keep being creative in little ways nearly every day; sometimes it's when I'm cooking, sometimes when I crochet and definitely whenever I pick up a camera or a pen - even if I'm only using that pen to doodle!

My body may be slow to respond to these efforts, but my mind and soul are in a much better place. Occasionally I find myself wishing I'd gotten on this better path years and years sooner - but I was doing the best I could with what I knew and what I had. I was ready to make real changes this year, and I'm making them.

Which brings me full circle. You know how they say you should start saving for college as soon as your babies are born? (Another boat I missed but, again, we'll figure it out.) Well, the other thing you should do before, during and after your babies are born is take care of yourself.

It's damn hard to walk up and down hilly university campuses when you're not in good shape!

All the best to you & yours~

$1000s in Debt, 20 Years of Marriage, 2 Resolutions & a Nightmare Involving Big C

After the way I launched 2010, and what followed in the next twelve months, I'm trying to get my head around how to best approach 2011. See, this time last year I let go of all of my traditional resolutions (lose weight, go to bed earlier, blah-blah-blah) and ardently focused on two things:

1. To improve my marriage
2. To improve our family's financial situation

My marriage wasn't horrible; it just wasn't what I knew it could be - what I felt it should be after twenty years married and twenty-two years as a couple. We were in the sterotypical marital situation known in longhand as "we-need-to-reconnect-renew-respect-get-on-the-same-page-before-we-really-lose-each-other" syndrome.

We'd each been growing, but not in the same direction. And we had been under the duress of having less than enough money (and ever increasing debt) due to hit after hit that I took in my freelance writing/editing career, beginning in the aftermath of 9/11 and gaining momentum as the economy fell apart.

My husband was on board to collaborate with me on preventing our financial situation from bleeding out. It was his idea to refinance our home, and without any other real options we embarked on an arduous regimen of exhaustingly intrusive, extensive paperwork that culminated in a decent outcome. The insane credit card debt (you know, for luxuries like groceries, clothes for our growing children and such) was gone. We had a doable mortgage payment. At last, at last, by the end of May we were breathing with some measure of ease.

And then came June.

My husband and I were seated across from each other at our dining room table. I was either working on a crossword puzzle, making a list or reading because my head was down when I heard him ask in a wobbly, garbled voice:

"Uh, honey? Um, what's this lump on my neck?"

"What-what lump?" I wanted to see it from where I was, assess that it was a pimple and discount the fear he was unsuccessfully restraining.

"Here, right here. You have to feel it."

His left hand was working over a spot on his right collar bone, and I got up to investigate. I felt it before I saw it, and an immediate flash of light-headed dread shot through me. It just...wasn't...right. It was hard. Immobile. When he turned his head to the left I could see it jutting out where it didn't belong.

I didn't make a big deal of it; told him that since we couldn't figure out what it was, he should definitely have it checked. Soon.

Our moment of shared intuition - something is definitely wrong - unfolded week after week as we spiraled our way down a medical rabbit hole. Chest x-ray..."spots" detected. Scans...more of the same. Biopsy... "Don't keep your vacation plans" (our first family vacation in five years thanks to the refi) "until we're satisfied that enough tests are in the hopper." More tests. Four days before our scheduled flight we're given the green light to go to Disney.



The day after we return, the news that "a spoonful of sugar" can't help us to digest despite Mary Poppins' promise: It's cancer.

The rabbit hole deepened with one complex surgery to remove the lump (like an iceberg, it was much larger in the unseen interior of my husband's neck than the bit that was visible from the skin's surface) and a seven-hour surgery to remove his thyroid, all the lymph nodes on one side of his neck and any other cancer that was present. We learn that it was "the good thyroid cancer," albeit unusually aggressive. A few weeks later an iodine-free diet goes into effect for a month, then radioactive iodine therapy, then...

Thanksgiving. And thankful we were, and we continue to be. Parts of this year felt like a pop-exam for which no study sheet or notes were provided. There was a sliver of fear: Can we do this from the shaky ground we've been living on? But with the courage to dig deep, we found our commitment to ourselves and we fortified it exponentially. Plus (yes, I must knock on wood), my husband has emerged very well from his physical trials.

Given what I resolved last year and how seriously the universe seemed to take me, I've been ultra careful when it comes to making resolutions for 2011. I've been thinking that maybe, just maybe, the resolutions we make with the most feeling behind them are the ones the gods actually set into motion.

With less than 24 hours to go before that New York City glitter-ball drops, I am finally getting some clarity on the matter. Earlier this evening I happened upon the website http://indestructiblefilm.com created by a young man named Ben. The website is named for his film, "Indestructible," about his journey with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). Tragically, Ben died from this catastrophic illness, but his legacy lives on in his film and other aspects of his website including his blog, in which his brother has made a few entries. One of his brother's posts really got to me:

"The most important thing I learned from my brother Ben, and the crappy disease he died from is this -

Life is short. Make it count.

That message permeates almost everything I do and believe. And when it doesn't, I can generally kick myself in the ass and get it going again.

For me, life is about laughter, being creative and endlessly exploring the world around me. Everyone has different details in the script, but the basic premise is the same. We all want to have an impact on something, and die proud of who we were.

Success can be measured by many things. Luckily, it is not always about money, but also by what kind of influence you have. 'Indestructible' has been, and will continue to be, a wonderful and important tool to educate people about a worldwide killer, about a man who faced his fears head on, and most importantly - appreciating life to its fullest."

So inspiring! With that I'm going to go create the feeling-fueled wording of what I set out to accomplish this year. If the results are story-worthy, I'll be writing here the same time next year.

Happy New Year!
~t~

P.S. Gratitude continues to flow from our hearts to every human and spiritual guide who helped us through this difficult year. Thank you, Beloved souls. Thank you. xoxo