I’m contemplating treating myself to a day at the spa.
Not really.
But seriously… can it be that a celebration is in order?
Nah… I never feel right spoiling myself.
I’m always doing the pampering, not receiving the pampering.
Maybe that ought to change, too.
They hadn’t seen him in three weeks. On Friday night, they spent over five hours with him. When they walked in the door, at the end of the night, I did a quick scan to check for rapid blinking, slumped shoulders, nervous pacing or shell-shocked expressions.
Nothing.
Will and Jen spoke animatedly about the event they attended. They talked of what they’d had for dinner and the stories shared. They spoke of the folks they saw.
They didn’t mention the baby voice, or the martyr tone. There was nothing about being overly embarrassed – other than the typical ways that all parents embarrass their kids. Nothing about hurt feelings, or insults, or critiques about hair, dress or table manners.
__________ Continue reading →
Yesterday marked three weeks since the Wednesday morning meeting with Mark.
During the last three weeks, the kids have received one email, and several (not daily) phone calls from Mark. The calls have varied from short and terse, to lengthy and pleasant. Mark has not pressured them to see him. They have not asked to see him.
They have returned his calls when he has asked them to do so in a message.
They have not called of their own accord.
The mood in our house, is light and without pressure. Continue reading →
It’s November 1st. The bathroom has yet to be painted. The pumpkin vines are snaking through the dead tomato plants. The leaves are piled against the west fence. I have managed to put the Halloween decorations up on the shelf in the garage, but the Thanksgiving decorations are piled on a chair next to the dining room table, waiting for me to decide where to display them.
I have a tendency (you probably have that same tendency) to beat myself up for what I didn’t get done, instead of reveling in the things that I accomplished.
There were plenty of things on the list for 2010.
Many were crossed off.
The book isn’t done. Continue reading →
I took this picture four summers ago. We’d gone camping a month after we’d moved out of their dad’s house. I often wonder what Will was thinking while he was sitting and waiting for the ‘big one’ to land on his line. I hope he was thinking like any other boy doing what he was doing – that he was thinking about fishing.
I don’t want to believe that he was thinking about not living at his dad’s. I don’t want to know that he was wondering or worrying about what was happening to his eight year old life.
__________
Fast forward to today.
I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes, and I looked up at the calendar for something. Continue reading →
The Universe wrapped her arm around me Wednesday evening. I felt her warm breath on my ear.
This is what I heard her say:
“Listen, Honey, you’ve done a fine job. I’m proud of you for doing your best. I know this was hard for you. You got through to him as much as you possibly can. He’s injured, Dear, and you can’t do anything about it. You knew that when you married him, and you know that now.
You can rest easy in the knowledge that you have done as much as you possibly can. I don’t expect any more from you. Now you must focus your energies on caring for yourself and your children. You have avoided the negativity as long as you could. You tried tenderness and compassion.
It’s time for you to move on.”
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She was standing in the rice and beans aisle in the grocery store. She’d forgotten her list. She knew she needed some sort of rice or pasta or beans or some such.
All she could think about was buying a pack of cigarettes.
She wouldn’t smoke the whole pack. She wanted to taste one single cigarette – not even the whole thing – one deep, long drag. She stood there arguing with herself. The first thing the surgeon said when she came to, after heart surgery six weeks ago was, “Listen, if you want this to work – if you don’t want to see me again – you MUST quit smoking.”
For the first few weeks, she had no desire. Every single thought in her head was consumed with the act of survival. All she could do was breathe and let her body heal. She barely gave cigarettes a thought. Who was she kidding? She thought of them, but not with the desperation that she’d expected.
Now, on her first solo shopping trip, six long weeks after surgery, she was consumed with the prospect of buying and smoking one delicious, long. slender best friend. Continue reading →
Thoughts have power; thoughts are energy. And you can make your world or break it by your own thinking.
Susan Taylor
I’m plugging along, making sure my shoe laces are tied, minding my manners, remembering to cross my t’s and dot my i’s, when suddenly Mark swoops in and screws up my happy parade. For a long time, Mark had me convinced that my little parade didn’t matter. My parade was simply the precursor to his main event.
Because I grew to believe he was right, I still occasionally forget that my parade – stuff, projects, life – is important. It’s when I forget that my stuff is important that I let him send me into a tailspin.
That’s our history.
I start to veer too far of course – his course – and he has to yank me back to where he thinks I belong.
Even though this blog is proof that I have learned why I react the way I do, I still have work to do on my reactions to his swooping in and yanking. Continue reading →
It usually takes about 36 hours.
If you call me somewhere in that 36 hours, I’ll have forgotten to smile before answering the phone. My voice will immediately tell you that I’m in the depths of the funk. I’m down in the dark of a deep well. I don’t have any reserves for pretending to be cheerful – for using my ‘Hey-I’m-Glad-You-Called’ voice, when I pick up the phone.
I’ll be hoping there are decent leftovers in the fridge, so I won’t have to come up with an idea for dinner.
Better yet, I’ll send mom a mental telepathy message that says, “Please invite us for dinner tonight.”
She usually responds. Continue reading →
Because it’s Saturday morning. Because my friend just sent these to me. Because these bring a smile to my face, and hopefully to your face, too. But mostly because I’m a mom who is over-the-top proud of absolutely everything her kids create.
I’m not debating whether creativity comes from struggle or whether we are simply a tool to give voice to creativity. I believe we are all born with creative talent. Most of us forget that.
We get older. We lack encouragement. We forget how fun it is to create. We compare what comes from our minds and hands to others and we feel that we come up short. We become too critical of ourselves.
Creativity thrives in an environment where someone (Mark) isn’t telling us that the sun is always yellow, the grass is always green, trees always have leaves and we must always stay in the lines.
I do know that creating something is a healthy way to temporarily escape the stresses and difficulties that life may put in front of us. When we paint or draw or sing or write, our brains get a chance to quit stewing about issues. When we create, we allow our brains a little vacation from being grown-up and responsible. Continue reading →
I’m looking out on the pond. The tall grasses framing the pond barely sway. The butterflies dance from the tips of the grasses and occasionally dip to skim the surface of the water. The pond is so calm it is difficult to discern where the grass meets its reflection. The quiet is heavy in a comforting, secure way. I feel safe and serene and untouchable.
The kids are content. There are frogs to catch and fish to fry. The dog begs to play. The forest beckons to be explored.
All of this won’t last. We will have to go home.
I foolishly believed that by divorcing Mark, I’d be able to escape his bizarre treatment. I thought the kids would be spared his picking and annexing.
The truth is that while we don’t deal with Mark on a daily basis, we can’t completely escape from any kind of relationship with him. We can’t avoid the fact that Mark is Jenny and Will’s dad. We can’t stop the visits altogether. We endure the visits by comforting ourselves with the knowledge that each visit comes to an end. He will not be tucking the kids in bed at night. Continue reading →
Just received an email from a dear friend. Her youngest has gone off to college. She lives on the other side of the country, and yet I can feel how her life has shifted in a plate tectonics sort of way. I’d like to be camped at her house with cocktails, dinners, movies and whatever her favorite distractions may be. I know that the gesture would be appreciated, but that’s the last thing she would want right now.
Our parenting styles are very similar. That is to say, our worlds revolve around our kids, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’m a recovering helicopter parent. When Will was small, I obsessed about every bite he took, the length of every nap, and his clothing preferences. I could tell you what kind of mood he was in by the expression on his face. I knew his smell, the rumblings he muttered when he slept, his favorite songs, and his weird sign language that took the place of speech for a scary long time.
We seemed to communicate on a cellular level.
When Jenny came along, I was presented with a new being to cherish and obsess over. I was in tune with her on a totally different, feminine level. I read her moods, felt her needs and anticipated her wants before she had to express them. Continue reading →
Even with my untrained eye, I could see the treads were worn on my tires. I was looking at taking a couple long road trips, and with my precious cargo, I figured it’d be prudent to buy new tires. The tire guy explained that my old set of tires was designed for driving on gravel roads. Then I remembered that Mark had purchased those tires because not only is his house set in on a gravel road, but he was planning to use my car for our family fishing/skiing/hiking trips.
I felt some weird sense of victory when telling the tire guy that I wouldn’t be needing tires fit for gravel any more. Yes – I still drive gravel to the cabin and skiing. No – I do not live in a house on a gravel road.
So there.
The kids and I laughed at the smooth ride. Who knew different tires could make that much of a difference? We left the tire shop and headed to the grocery store, windows rolled down, the three of us sighing and saying, “Ahhh. Smooth ride, huh?”
A couple days later, we set out on our road trip west to see family. We stocked up on fritos, cheese and cracker sets, waters, sunflower seeds, DVDs, sketch books, and word search books and put just over 1400 miles on the car in a round trip to the state of Washington. Continue reading →
