Category Archives: Family

Have a Very Lillian Killion Christmas!

It’s that time of year when Hallmark Christmas Movie titles are constantly flooding my psyche. Maybe it’s because I begin watching these predictable yet comforting films in October. Maybe it’s another sign I’m getting older, but this year, more than most, I am remembering more vividly than ever those magical first Christmases of my early childhood. It would be impossible to think about those times without remembering my adorable Grandmother whose very name would make an amazing Hallmark Christmas movie title – Lillian Killion. In fact, throw in her maiden name – De Lisle – along with her girlish nickname – “Lil” – and one could conjure an image of a modern rapper (my nail tech once did, recently!). Lil De Lisle grew up to become Lillian Killion. We called her “Mim” (I was the youngest of her 9 grandchildren).

One year my Mom let me plan a surprise birthday party for Mim. I picked up the phone and called her 2 best friends, Aunt Grace and Mrs. Segal and it was a lively affair. Ever the one to tease, I remember choosing these candles to give the appearance we were celebrating her 102nd birthday!

Mim was widowed before I was born so my memories begin with picking her up on Saturdays to bring her to our home for supper, a little “Lawrence Welk Show” then evening Mass. We lived in a small town in Southern Missouri – what is often referred to as the “Bootheel.” As I get older, I am struck by the fact that I truly had a Southern upbringing. This is another story, but after I started High School 200 miles North in St. Louis, Missouri, I did my very best to shed any evidence of my small town heritage. What a pity! I made this decision within days of arriving at a private Catholic school for young women. I had not understood something a teacher in class had just said, so I raised my hand with the question, “Ma’am?” on my tongue and was quickly embarrassed to death with the other students’ reactions. I traded in my Southern softness and naivete for a more popular, hard-edged “big city” persona. Or so I thought.

I remember details about my Grandmother like most children: her voice, her skin, her laugh, the smart clothing she wore, her museum-like house with the back door that played a familiar classical hymn (I could hum it but have no idea it’s origin) whenever she opened it. About 2 paces inside her back door was a refrigerator stocked with Orange Crush cola. Another 50 paces down the hall and into my Dad’s childhood bedroom was a beautiful mahogany dresser stuffed with Wrigley’s spearmint chewing gum – a bit of a stretch to reach the top drawer but I always managed it. Mim’s bathroom was all pink tile and she kept a magnifying glass next to her powder blue velvet reclining chair (though I don’t imagine her to be the reclining type) for reading important weather reports and social news from our local paper, “The Portageville Review.” I remember her giggle most of all. It was girlish. She always seemed mildly amused around me. I remember asking her how old she was one day and this came close to making her decidedly unamused. She thought about it for a second and quickly answered, “I’m seventiesh” – but in a way that left no question in my mind that I was to pry no further. I never met my Grandfather, whom I am told doted on her. A dear friend of the family told me once how endearing it was to see my Grandfather affectionately hand Mim a $5 bill and tell her to go buy herself something she would enjoy. Watching these moments must be how my charming and adorable Dad picked up one of my favorite traits – greeting me on the stairway the minute I walked in for a visit from Kansas City with $100 cash – for “gas money,” he’d say with a twinkle in his eye.

This time of year, what I cherish most are the memories of holidays from my childhood and the absolutely perfectly thought out gifts I received from my dear Grandmother, Mim. Looking back, she must have consulted with my Mom to have been so on target each year. If she didn’t, then I love her even more than I thought. First, some history. I come from a large family and Mim was concerned about treating each one of my 6 older siblings and me exactly the same. Hence, the tradition of the $40.00 checks from her we all found in our stockings hung with care each Christmas morning. The first time my husband and I talked about childhood holiday traditions when we were dating he wanted to know what a “traditional family stocking stuffer” looked like in our family. He eagerly shared that in his it was a single orange. When I offered up my own equally cherished tradition, he just stared at me in silent disbelief bordering on deep sadness and pity. So much so it made me laugh hysterically at the contrast in our experiences. How could a child, he wondered, find joy in a check from their Grandmother for Christmas? Oh, quite easily, I reassured him! 26 years later, he still does not understand and this amuses me even more so now.

Moving on from the checks drafted from Farmers Bank of Portageville and signed by Lillian Killion, here is a list (in what I recall to be chronological order) of the greatest Christmas gifts of all time from her:

Tinker Bell perfume/powder set – if you don’t instantly get a hypnotic olfactory memory from this classic name then you didn’t grow up in the 70’s. I powdered and dabbed perfume just about every visible surface I could find that Christmas, thanks to Mim.

Clearly sensing my appetite for fragrance mixing, the next year Mim gave me a perfume mixing kit. Imagine putting essential oils in the hands of a 6- year old today and saying, “Have fun!” and this approximates my joy that year. I had several tiny apothecary type jars and a beginner’s lab of fragrances to work with. This kept me busy for days, I am sure. Until I decided how fun it would be to pour the perfume into the moving mouth of my “Baby Alive,” a gift from Santa that year. It was disappointing to discover that “BA” did not consume or digest my perfume concoctions the same way she did the milk and formula that came in the box.

Next came the “STEM” years, or as close to science, technology and math as girls in the 1970’s could get. My Grandmother gifted me a series of wonderful items that kept me occupied for hundreds of hours (to my parents’ delight). First, a metal detector. I took treasure hunting seriously back in 1975 and this device of scientific discovery accompanied me everywhere I went. My Mother would drop me off at the park for some real down and dirty search for valuables left behind by careless and inattentive park visitors. I don’t think I ever found anything more valuable than a beer can tab or the occasional penny, but it did not stop me from trying. Then, after a propitious visit to a nearby American Indian burial mound with Sister Arthur, my Grandmother gifted me a rock polishing machine to complement my perpetual searches for arrowhead rocks in the soybean field behind my house. I can still hear the sound of tumbling rocks inside the canister on the rolling platform and feel the anticipation of the fresh jewels I would be holding at the end of the tumbling cycle. From there, I moved on to searching for geodes for a brief stint after Jeff Brands gave a scintillating presentation about them at a 4H meeting. Alas, the enthusiasm did not last long but it was fun while it lasted.

The final Christmas gift of my childhood that Mim bestowed upon me was the best. My very own DJ station, complete with turntable and microphone! I converted Mom’s dining room to my personal radio station, spinning wax and talking about the tunes to my imaginary radio listeners. With 6 older siblings, I had a virtual American Bandstand cache to choose from so the programming possibilities were endless. The Dave Clark 5, The Archies, Herman’s Hermits and Tommy James and the Shondells (“Crimson & Clover” I played over and over!) blasted off that turntable and into my radio universe for many a contented childhood hour.

Whether it was perfume, scientific exploration or music, the gifts Mim gave me for Christmas helped shape me. Somehow, with 8 other grandchildren to think about, she knew me and delighted in my imagination. I can’t wait to see her again and hear her giggle. I will thank her for the special memories and love she gave to me at Christmas and always. Then I will ride in the backseat of our paneled Ford station wagon again as one of my teenaged sisters or Mom picks Mim up for her nail appointment, grocery store or to go to Saturday afternoon confession. The fact that she never drove a car was a unique and glorious opportunity to know her better. And I am thankful for that.

Saying Goodbye to Our Family Pet

16 winters ago, on a Friday evening just before a looming ice storm set in on the cold Kansas prairie, my 7 year old little girl was pulling beach towels out of closets to make a “temporary home” in a cardboard box just outside our kitchen door for a stray kitty. She had already named the cat “Katy,” so we knew she was probably going to become a permanent fixture on our 34 acres out in the country.

Our country home under construction. We moved in and suddenly my children’s lives were filled with “creature wonder.” Momma deer with babies, wild turkey, tortoises, scorpions, snakes, stray cats, dogs and sometimes horses were all frequent visitors and uninvited guests.

The following spring, Katy unexpectedly (to us “city pups,” unfamiliar with the ways of country life) gave birth to a litter of adorable kittens. For months, Isa and Mario’s entertainment focused around playing with the kittens. Vanilla ended up being the only one of the litter that survived. Katy was viciously killed by a couple of stray dogs while defending her kittens. To say we were shocked by the harsh realities of country animal life would be an understatement. The best we could do was adopt Vanilla (whom previously my husband had insisted would remain a garage cat) and bring him indoors to complete our family. And that is where he has stayed for 15 1/2 years.

These past couple of weeks, Vanilla slowly tapered off his eating until quitting completely the last 5 days of his life. We all had our chances to say goodbye, but the hardest was with his Mommy, Isa, via FaceTime from her work retreat. It’s so hard doing the compassionate thing when you’ve grown up with a pet. Isa used to come home from 2nd grade and stand on our back deck calling Vanilla’s name. Before long, he’d come running up from the wooded canyon behind our house, following the sound of her sweet voice. He was half wild (feral!) kitty and half domesticated pet and that’s how he lived until his last breath.

This morning was extremely bittersweet. We watched him stumble to the back door for a breath of fresh air after carrying him down from his last night in our bed. He bathed in the sunlight of our floor to ceiling windows in the den one last time. And if he could have mustered the strength, I know he would have loved to have hissed at Pudgey, the innocent but vacuous cocker spaniel. We loved him well. I can only hope he is on my Dad’s lap in heaven right now hearing about what a “Good Ole’ Good Boy” he is.

Overnight Parental Metamorphosis

 

My son, my second child, just left the house for his Senior Year of High School finals.  I know this day is a major rite of passage.  So I go to my basement and retrieve a few fragments of his and his sister’s childhood from the big box of grade school papers I have kept all these years.  I am that Mom.  The one who frames art projects and puts every lost tooth in a ziplock bag.  These memories are my treasures.

You don’t get to choose many of the experiences your children will have outside your four walls and nothing prepares you for the disappointments the world will heap upon them – you can only hope that your love will be the cushion your child needs to bounce back and return to the world of unexpected experiences the following day.

As a child, Motherhood and writing were my true callings.  I wrote plays and each afternoon baked goodies in my Easy Bake oven before picking my imaginary kids up on my bicycle riding up and down my long driveway and talking to them.  As an adult, my life has luckily pretty much mirrored what I always dreamed and imagined motherhood would be.  Except the joy I have felt over the beauty of children’s innocence and unfaltering love was deeper than anything I had ever experienced.  And the anguish over not being able to solve a child’s heartache with a bowl of ice cream and a hug more harsh than any adult experience I had ever known.

The most unexpected delight from mothering a girl and a boy has been the gift of being the guardian of the gentle unfolding of their hearts in this world.  Being a parent at our house has often meant inviting the outside world to our table.  The way my children embraced our Little Brother when we were matched as a Family in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program was loving and open-hearted.  They were open and accepting of the experience and shared our abundance of love, food, toys and fun with him without urging by me or their Dad.  And the outside adventures their hearts led our family to were beyond any planned playdate or experience I could have ever mapped out.  When our daughter told us at age 8 she wanted to be a competitive cheerleader, we set off on 2 years of driving hundreds of miles each week and thousands of 8-counts and sassy faces and moves to impress judges at competitions.  She already had grit, determination and focus.  The competitive sport just gave her an outlet, and her overwhelmed Mom was grateful for that.

My husband will faint in disbelief when he reads this, but I am grateful to have lived in the country on 32 acres for part of our kids’ childhood, in particular, the formative part.  They learned how to occupy themselves on long, windy, hot summer days without constant monitoring or activities.  Families enjoyed campfires, storytelling and music in the evenings and our son became a huge fan of the annual music festival that took place 1 mile from our back door.  To this day, his favorite smell is smoke from a campfire and as a young man, our house has become the headquarters for his friends to linger, laugh and talk into the night by a simple campfire.  Our daughter honed her writing skills and our many 8-hour car trips to visit family in St. Louis were a great source of inspiration.  Here she writes about the “Throwing Up Spring Break” of 2006 which was preceded by the “greatest day” of our 6-year-old son’s life at Disney on Ice.

Although today officially marks a transition from parenting children to young adults, and my heart is somewhat tender with wistful memories of those early days, I look forward to the next chapter – one that has already begun with my daughter – of witnessing, supporting, validating and loving the young adults my children become.

These 2 are my treasures and they belong to the world now, not me.  That’s both the most painful and proud reality of parenting:  these children gifted to us are born to fly.  Instead of planning the next week to make sure I am available for sporting events or other activities they love, I am, even as I write this, officially promoted to Witness.  I don’t have to referee their journey anymore.  Another Mom recently said, “You go from parent to consultant overnight.”  It might take me a few boxes of tissue to make the transition.  Each tear will be worth it.

Now I get to see who they invite to our table.

A Gentleman in a Turbulent World

Gentleman

 

This is a post I have been thinking about for over 2 months but this week provides the perfect backdrop to what I want to talk about:  the characteristics of a gentleman.  Specifically, the man I married and had children with.  As a young woman, the things I loved about my husband hit all the “marriage material” marks:  well-educated, hard- working, sweet, funny and eager to have a family. After 22 years of marriage, the single trait that stands out above all others has nothing to do with personality and everything to do with character:  my husband is a gentleman.  He can be trusted to consistently be fair, loving and even-tempered.  He treats people with respect, no matter how he feels about them.  And he never ever, not once, expected the world to hand him anything he wasn’t willing to work for.

When my Dad passed away, his best friend shared something about him that I wish I had known and been able to process as I grew into adulthood and tried to understand the man he was.  His friend told me that, more than anything, my Dad was excited about having been accepted to Law School as a young man.  It was his dream that, unfortunately, never came to be.  Family obligations changed his fate and my Dad, ever the gentleman, honored his commitments and took care of his family instead of pursuing his dream.  I found this out exactly one day after he died and for me, this shred of information explained the unspoken questions I had about my Dad for 45 years.  Because he was a “man of the 1950’s,” I suppose it wasn’t considered appropriate or even relevant to talk about his dreams – he just got up every day and took care of his family.  He could have been a real resentful jerk about his fate but chose to be a gentleman.  That’s why I fell in love with my husband, I understand now.

I want our children to see their Dad through my eyes as they become adults and that’s really what this post is about.  I want them to know absolutely without a doubt that:

  • You are the Center of your Dad’s world – there is nothing he wouldn’t do to give you love, self-assurance, creativity, hope and excitement about the things you can do in this world with your one life;
  • Your Dad is often incorrectly mistaken as meek and mild because he has a gentle temperament but nothing could be further from the truth.  He is a fighter to the core and he’s overcome many personal and career obstacles fighting for you and our family.  Your Mom quits things – your Dad never does;
  • When other people are bragging and bullying their way to temporary, “better” positions in life, you can find your Dad quietly plugging away in his corner of the world, doing hundreds of small things that gentlemen do:  honoring promises; finishing projects long after your Mom has given up because it’s the right thing to do; staying focused on what needs to be done today to reach that distant dream in the future instead of procrastinating (again like your Mom); being kind to people who may have hurt him or someone he loves instead of puffing out his chest and threatening them in order to make himself feel better (you know I do this!).

When your Dad is angry, he finds a way to resolve it and move forward because he knows in and of itself, anger will destroy everything in his path.  Your Dad, the Gentleman, is a saver, a lover, and a person who takes what is before him today and makes something that lasts into the future.  In his quietly determined way, your Dad is the strongest person I know.  And he has never once bragged about that.

My hope for you children is that you will offer this wounded world some of your Dad’s fair-minded, even-tempered gentleness.  It will serve you and those around you very well for the rest of your lives.

The Path that Found Me

My husband and son are out of town on a big adventure for several days and my daughter and I are relaxing, enjoying some down time.  As is my habit when I have a little extra mental space and time, I go digging through old boxes in search of old letters, pictures, tokens from my past.  Though I have seen this photo so many times this morning it startled me:  she’s so young and fresh, like the strawberry she’s posing with next to her friend.  At 52, it is wonderful to have arrived at an age where I can recall a story for nearly every little scrap I have saved in my “special box” over the years.  Here’s what I remember about this picture.

The friend I am with was a special one for a short time.  We were both recently out of Graduate School and beginning our career paths, though mine was in the nonprofit world and her’s was health care administration.  Her career-obsessed, interrupting, impatient colleague drove us to the dinner we are enjoying in the photo.  I was half-heartedly pursuing what I thought would be a good “career path” for myself, though 50 percent of the people I met who were serious “career-oriented” people were way too intense for me.

Silly then, sillier now.  That’s me.  But I was ashamed of it then.  Looking at this sweet girl in the picture, I want to love her and reassure her that the right Path will find her. That it ultimately does not matter in life who you impress at meetings or how high you are willing to climb to earn a career.  The rude colleague of my friend ultimately achieved the highest honors in her career and she received accolades, awards and respect.  Good for her.  My “non-path path” has been glorious, sometimes painful but always given me the right kind of experience and space I needed to grow.

My son brilliantly summed up for me the most valuable part of any journey when he exclaimed his woes about his second day of kindergarten on the car ride home:  “My day was horrible!  The teacher only gave us 7 minutes to daydream!”  This kid is so my kid.  To resist externally imposed structure so resolutely at age 5 was both a blessing and curse for him and I have personally witnessed the toll an absurdly rigid school routine can take on his soul.  My advice to him and all you other free spirits out there:  trust yourself enough to know that the choices you make in life will yield abundance in many beautiful ways.  You may not choose a path that is laden with financial rewards and career milestones worthy of publishing in a business journal.  But this much I know:  THE WORLD NEEDS DAYDREAMERS!

So the path that found me was the one that was inside my heart as a youngster.  I loved getting on my bicycle and playing “carpool” with my imaginary children.  Unfortunately, as a woman in the eighties and nineties, it wasn’t very cool to admit that all you really wanted to do was “just be a Mom.”  But that’s what I have done and it has been my greatest joy in life.  I have a daughter, too, and she’s a creative genius and force of nature.  And I married a guy who does my favorite thing in the world:  he writes great love notes.  This one popped up when I was treasure hunting in my special box today.  We had been married exactly 5 weeks, I was undergoing testing for terrible allergies, and my guapo half Argentinean new groom wrote me these words:Love Note

My life has been rich and the journey becomes sweeter with age, as anybody over 50 understands, because we know each day is so precious.  I am so happy I decided to go through that box today and even happier that the Path I always dreamed of found me.

 

The Dog Days of Missing Boo

In 18 days, she’s coming back home for the summer!!!  It is a triumph to have survived the most dreaded event of my life.  I could not help but project onto my daughter my personal feelings about being away from home for the first time, so I caused myself infinitely more suffering this year than she ever came close to experiencing.  It’s what I do.

During her time away, my daughter has fully embraced her new experiences.  She’s in a great sorority, she participated in variety shows and charity events, she travelled to other college campuses, she has made wonderful friends, and she has her own separate identity that is hers and hers alone.  Her Dad and I are extremely humbled and proud.  And somehow, through all of it, my heart got BIGGER, not smaller, and we got closer, not more distant.

When my college Freshman daughter was in kindergarten, we BOTH hated it so much I had a countdown calendar in the kitchen that we eagerly scratched off the days leading up to the long-awaited summer break.  I think I hated kindergarten more, come to think of it, because my Isa spent the following summer writing letters to her teacher who was helping her husband heal from cancer.  That’s my girl, she stays connected to the people she cares about.  I should have known the “break” for college would not be an actual break, as my heart feared.

This is my message to all the Moms who are now in my shoes, anticipating (perhaps dreading) their child’s first year of college and what lies ahead:

  • Whatever groundwork has been laid before college holds the parent/child bond together;
  • In spite of whatever fears you may have from your past, your child is eager to move into the future and will do so regardless of how you feel, and it will be okay;
  • Your child needs to experience the world without you and vice versa – families change in many ways over time, but love makes more than enough room for the new stuff and people that will come into your life;
  • Instead of thinking as the transition to college as a personal loss, remind yourself each day that it is a victory – you created and raised a child who wants to engage in this crazy world with the tools you helped nurture;
  • If you are married or have a partner, be extremely proud that you did this together –  and if you are still together, even more so, for staying married and releasing a young adult into the world are both enormous accomplishments.

Yes, my heart aches because the time with my daughter as a budding adult is gone.  I am learning to put those feelings aside to wholeheartedly enjoy the friendship and journey we are on together.  She’s not going to leave me behind, she has proven that.  I can keep counting days until I see her again if I want to, but this year has shown me that our bond of togetherness is stronger than physical presence.  She lives in my heart.

This summer, she has promised to take some walks with me and our dog, Pudgey.  Over the winter, Pudgey and I got sort of lazy and may have put on a few pounds wallowing in self-pity.  Thank goodness the Commander is on her way back home to whip us into shape!

 

I Think I know What Joy Is

I got to spend 3 whole days with my daughter who left for college this past August.  Let it be known, Momma is still not adjusted to this transition.  Daughter, however, is fully settled and thriving.  Experiencing her life, all the wonderful parts she chose so lovingly to share with me this weekend, has blessed me immeasureably.  I see now the future she embraces instead of the fear, worry and sadness I have held for so long.
The weather was perfect, and our weekend began with my sweet dancer performing in her University’s “Greek Sing,” a talent show of sorts geared toward entertaining the hundreds (if not thousands) of Moms visiting their college students.  Seeing the entire ensemble gave me concrete proof that college students are “different” than high school students in many ways.

Young adults moving about the world in their own skin, playing by their own rules and trying new experiences with their peer groups exhibit an energy and effervescence that is contagious.

It felt wonderful to step away from the tired, grumpy, complain-y adult world of “ain’t it awful” to breathing the spring air of fresh life, young energy and optimism for the future.  That energy was palpable.  I soaked it in.  I feel new.

We enjoyed lunch with her new friends and Moms at the Sorority house then a lovely evening meal that she and her friends had carefully plotted – and everything was perfect.  I was captivated by watching my daughter and seeing both parts of myself as a young adult and a whole new beautiful person – the unique woman she is evolving to become.  She’s on her way.  She’s where she needs to be.  All my heaviness, worrying, tears – have just been for a Momma who didn’t yet understand her new place in her girl’s heart and life.

She proved to me this weekend I am still very much in her heart.  Fairly newly sober, I need “spaces” in each day now to process my thoughts and feelings and renew my energy.  Intuitively she understands this.  We did everything at my pace and she gently led me through the weekend without pressuring me to do more than I could.  Staying centered is important to me now, and I had no idea how very much my daughter respects and understands this.

Instead of continuing the evening with the group after the dinner, she told her friends we’d probably go back to our hotel and watch a movie.  I was delighted.  Off the hook yet also blessed to feel so “understood.”  Ironically, one of our favorite movies happened to be on tv – “The Blind Side.”  As we wound down the weekend, the words of Michael Orr to his Coach and later his Momma perfectly reflect my Daughter’s gentle love and presence:  “I’ve got your back,” he said.  So does she, and this Momma is beyond proud and happy.

 

The Practice of True Belonging

Lately I have reflected alot on Brene Brown’s definition of “true belonging” from her latest book, “Braving the Wilderness”:

“True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to
yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.”

There is a big whopping heap of wisdom in that one little definition! Consider it from the framework of a marriage: a happy and successful “union,” some say, is the sum of two whole parts. Both partners are complete going into the union. What about the years when outside influences and family responsibilities gnaw at the core of one’s “whole self” – what about times when you are giving so much of yourself, you feel lost inside your own home?

This happened to me when a series of overwhelming challenges happened in rapid succession. Not only did I not belong to myself, I felt separate from the “wholeness” of marriage. Alone and terrified. Money, kids, health, work, geography and all kinds of other mini-challenges crept in my life and the me I was once so solidly familiar with started to disappear. Often weary, I dulled my fighting impulse with red wine. I thought I was stronger (i.e., belonged more authentically to myself) when I was drinking, but this could not have been further from the truth. I forgot how worthy I was of a happy life, so I drowned all my dreams and ambitions in alcohol. Fortunately for me and my family, a spark of life remained and I woke up in 2015 to the realization that I had made a big mess trying to comfort myself through numbing rather than belonging. I was in a crisis of disconnection.

Brene Brown continues her definition of true belonging”

“True belonging is not something that you negotiate externally, it’s what you carry in your heart. It’s finding the sacredness in being a part of something and in braving the wilderness alone. When we reach this place even momentarily, we belong everywhere and nowhere. That sounds absurd, but it’s true.”

I wonder if the quest for “true belonging” isn’t the biggest challenge we as humans are meant to overcome. It seems so simple but the piece that brought me back to myself and the living world and my family was finding the sacredness in being a part of something. Somehow I had internalized the message early in life that belonging equaled weakness so when the road of my life got very twisty – I retreated into myself and stopped connecting.

Many addiction experts believe that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety – it’s connection. I wholeheartedly believe this to be true. The joy of connection is an equal opportunity healer – yet for some, the most difficult to attain. If you are around enough people who suffer from addiction disorders, you will likely hear it repeated that they are grateful for their addiction because it led them to this awareness that true belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world.

Living a sober life after years of dulling the brightness of the real world truly is an adventure in re-connecting with the child you once were and the loved ones you travel with. I am grateful to Brene Brown for helping me to clarify the importance of true belonging, it is the foundation for my whole life now.

Paychecks and Blueberries for Sal

 

“She will call less and less,” my husband casually remarked last night about our College Freshman whose nightly calls warm my heart.  I bit his head off.  “DON’T SAY THAT!,” I yelled back.  Silence.  What was that about, I began thinking.  Everything is off kilter these days because it’s all new:  our first child recently left the nest for college and at 51, I am in a new job, earning more than I have in eight difficult years.  I call them “difficult” because I have never fully embraced my value as a stay-at-home-mother, even though this is what I always wanted to do.

The sacrifices you make when you decide to earn less in exchange for being more present feel mostly unnoticed and under appreciated most of the time.

But that’s the kind of Momma I wanted to be!  ALWAYS available, no matter what.  So when my biggest paycheck of eight years hit the bank account last night, I found myself weighing the value of the money versus the value of being physically present for the household.  Here’s how it feels to me:  in the short term, putting a hefty-ish paycheck in the household account feels better than making sure there is a roast in the oven but in the long term, knowing we raised a young woman who wants to touch base with us often is the greatest payoff possible.  

We are all conditioned to thinking of our investments – financial, emotional, intellectual – in terms of returns.  That’s why I count the number of days I maintain long-term sobriety, because as the days add up, I figure the greater the “return.”  But not if I’m not emotionally sober.  To maintain emotional sobriety, you better be invested in pouring every type of energy and asset you have into living a life worth living.  After all, what’s the point of removing something as pleasurable as drinking red wine if I’m not going to enjoy the benefit of sobriety and that enjoyment isn’t going to spill over into other people’s lives and well-being?  Huh?  In other words, it’s just as important to replenish and nourish your emotional, spiritual and physical coffers as it is to earn money and spend it wisely.  Now I get to do both:  earn money to help support our family and reap the benefits of staying emotionally invested and close to my children as they were growing up.

These days, I think alot about special times with my children when they were young, especially bedtime story reading.  My daughter and I had many favorite books, among them, a 1950’s Caldecott Award winner, “Blueberries for Sal.”

1-Sample-Blueberries-for-Sal

Little Sal was so much like my Isa:  precocious, daring, full of life and love for new experiences.  Together we would read the story about the Momma Bear and her Cub on the same mountain – but the other side and out of view – as the Momma Human and little Sal – picking blueberries to sustain their bodies through the winter.

My paycheck from the new job felt like a pail of blueberries from the book.  Very gratifying and fun but also a worthwhile investment for lean, cold days in the future.  It felt good and associating it with something so precious from my daughter’s childhood gives me peace of mind that our sacrifices have been worth it.  Especially when she texted back, “Yes I do” this morning when I asked her if she remembered reading “Blueberries for Sal” with me.

“Why can’t a paycheck just be a paycheck and not turned into a dumb pail of blueberries, you weirdo?,” you may be asking yourself.  Because I am committed to living a life worth living.  This is what it means to understand a woman in midlife experiencing an emptying nest and working to maintain sobriety:  a cherished moment of understanding in a three-word text from your beautiful daughter away at college puts everything in perspective.  And all is well with my world.

The Antidote to Hate

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I am pretty sure I have written about this before, but the display of racial hatred in Charlottesville, Virginia this past 24 hours bears repeating.  We all try to raise happy kids, right?  And kids that will be kind to other kids, blah blah blah….  I think it is important to remember that BIG things start out as LITTLE things, both good and bad.  Liberals, Feminists, whatever you want to call them, often get labeled for calling out acts of hatred 24/7, for acting as self-proclaimed watchdogs of ugliness.  In my mind, this is a perfectly acceptable tradeoff – social condemnation in exchange for those constant, nitpicking little nudges of the moral conscience.  With my children, I think I strove to teach them they did not have to draw attention to themselves or do anything to bring any kind of condemnation or isolation upon themselves.  Instead, I tried to show them quiet, powerful ways of refusing to allow others to normalize hate.

My kids did their fair share of bickering when they were young.  I tried to tune it out in my head until it became mean spirited.  As soon as the bickering took a turn towards hatefulness, I would step in and announce the “penance”:  each one had to do something kind for the other before bedtime.  That was it.  I did not “follow up” or punish by making them regret losing a favorite toy or pastime.  I merely tapped into their moral conscience so they would think about the other for a moment and perform an act of kindness out of human decency.  The end.

In this way, I hoped my children would learn to stop and think about others long enough to consider what they could do to alleviate pain and suffering.

Mario was always the first one to enthusiastically embrace words of kindness, acts of forgiveness and deeds of pure goodwill.  It was so heartwarming to watch, really!  Isa was more contemplative and less demonstrative of her willingness to change, yet she always eventually offered kindness in perfect measure to whatever the situation demanded.

In today’s culture of absolute intolerance, fear and hatred are running amuck.  It is very difficult to perceive something as a small act of kindness as an antidote to the enormity of negative forces in our world.  Still, with one small little lesson in mind from childhood, I hope my children will continue to practice kindness in the face of evil, knowing that their small efforts contribute to the healing balm of hope this world so desperately needs.