To My Kids

I'm not much of a Christmas present buyer or giver.  I mean, I like to give gifts to my people throughout the year but the pressure of providing a gift simply because the calendar says it's time for the presents is just not my thing.  Couple that with the fact that I have four children to provide gifts for and the reality that my financial situation is less than spectacular, well, I'm sure people understand my point.

Personally, I prefer a gift that is either homemade or one that is given with much thought to the personality and interests of the recipient.  And that is why I've decided to write a letter to my kids as a special gift this year.  I do best with words.

Yeah, so you all know how I feel about Christmas.  You've seen me through the "all homemade year" and the "year of no tree" and even the "let's travel across the country on Christmas year".  Somehow we always seem to make it work and we keep at least a few familiar traditions in place.  We're good about that.

So this year has been a good year for all of you.  I'm so proud of each one of you and I know that your Dad would be so impressed with how well you guys are doing.  There have been lots of changes that you've had to deal with and you've done it with grace and maturity well beyond your years.  I suppose this ability to persevere and conquer will help you as you continue through life.  That's good.
I hope you know how much I love you guys and how hard I try to keep things going.  Not a day goes by that I don't feel tremendous guilt over what I can't do for you.  I worry about everything.  I feel horrible that you lost your amazing Dad but you also were left with your imperfect, impatient Mom as your only parent.  Your earthy, hippy, barefoot Mom who made everything from scratch (including your clothes!) and who home schooled you because your Dad and I wanted us all to be together as much as possible has been replaced with this Mom who I barely recognize and I feel so guilty.  Oh, I know there are things that you're probably glad to see go away (like elderberry syrup and skip counting songs) and, truth be told, there's a few things I'm glad to put away as well.  But I miss being together--all of us--and I worry.  Your Pop was a smart guy and he could teach you so many things that I cannot.  He was infinitely patient, which we all know that I am not.  He was laid back and slow-paced which we also know I am not.

When you have a baby it's amazing how much love you feel for something so small and unable to give anything in return.  And then when you have another child you're amazed that your love can be multiplied so easily.  That's kind of how I felt when Dad died, like the love I could give to each one of you now had to be multiplied--you needed my heart and your Dad's too.  I try really hard to keep your lives full of experiences and opportunities.  I may not have much money but what I have I try to use for every one's betterment.  I suppose that's why I buy Lucky Charms on occasion now.  Those marshmallows are so darn fun!  I try to be sure that the things that were important to Dad are somehow instilled in you too.  Except his taste in music--we can forget about that.  Blah.

I've tried to shield a lot of ugly realities of life from you.  I don't know how well I've succeeded.  I wish you did not have to deal with the cruelty of people who you should be able to trust.  I wish you didn't have to be afraid of your future and the uncertainty that looms around the corner.  I wish you didn't have to hear untrue, unkind words spoken.  I so wish that you did not have to feel abandoned and untethered.  I try so very hard to give you security and consistency and stability.  Those things keep me getting up in the morning.  The lesson in all of this is, I suppose, a lesson in how not to live and how not to treat people.

Again, I want you to know how proud I am of each one of you.  School, sports, jobs, adult responsibilities.  You guys are amazing.  You've dealt with injuries and unfair treatment and worries with such character.  I see your Dad in each one of you.  Your love of X-Files and Star Wars and coffee and dark beer and hunting and fishing and taking care of the animals and cutting wood and reading and music and baseball.  My list goes on and on.  He is in each of you.  Never forget that.  Even though he is not here he is still with you.

We are in this together and we are kicking ass.  Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.  Don't be a half-asser, do your best, always tell the truth, and know your boundaries.  Start the fire if you're the first person up, clean up your messes, always take the time to hold babies.  Wear good socks, make your bed, and read a book occasionally.

Love you guys.

I Detest Mice.

Sometimes I forget that I can't go back.  I mean, I know that I cannot age backwards and I'm really fine with that fact.  And as much as I miss those fleeting baby years from my kids growing up I'm pretty much OK with leaving that in the past too.

What I forget is that I cannot have my old life back.  Ever.

Sometimes I feel like I am just passing the days until things "go back to normal."   That I'm just in a temporary stage or a season of sorts and eventually things will fall back into that comfortable, familiar place again.

It's easy to deceive myself.

I keep looking ahead, not to the side or behind.  Keep doing the things.  Go through the motions. Check off the days.  In due course I can stop holding my breath and everything will be normal.  I will be able to breathe again.  Inhale.  Exhale.

Bullshit.

This is not the interim.  This is not passing.  Nope.  This is perpetual and standing and constant.  Hard words to get my feeble arms to embrace.

I got out the Christmas decorations the other day because what kind of Mom would I be if I didn't decorate for the holidays?  Personally, I like to think I'd be a more sane, relaxed Mother but I doubt I could get my kids to hop on board that idea.  So like most families I have a hodge-podge mix of Christmas decorations.  Kid's homemade ornaments, family heirlooms, trinkets picked up here and there, even items from Bill's and my childhoods.  Our decorations would not be featured in any magazine spread but the overall presentation of our baubles is a great representation of our lives.

That is, until the mice ruined everything.  Freaking vermin.  All our memories, packed into Rubbermaid totes, covered with mouse crap.  Mice nests in the creche.  Christmas books covered with mouse urine.  Stockings chewed up.  I'd like to send Rubbermaid a picture of the devastation and tell them that their product sucks.

As I tried to salvage what I could and burn the irreparably ruined items I was struck by how easy it was to throw it all away.  Oh sure, a lot of this stuff held great memories of happy times.  But it was just stuff.  (Stuff that was going to give me hantavirus now)  I understood that what happened to the contents of these few totes was out of my control.  Kind of like the circumstances of my life were also out of my control.  Putting it out at the curb with this week's garbage was probably easier than trying to clean it up and keep it.  Am I going to miss the ugly table runner or sock snowmen (that I made when the big kids were tiny so they couldn't break anything) or ceramic Santa figurine?  Maybe.  But not much.

Hey, don't think for a minute that I'm comparing the fleeting significance of mere stuff with the importance of life.  I am not.  But the act of throwing seemingly important things away without suffering major regret has just got me thinking.  

Complacency, though comfortable, is no way to live life.  Or so I'm finding.  Don't confuse responsibility and complacency.  They are not the same.  One is self-satisfying and one is a mature choice in taking care of what is yours--and taking care of it to the best of your ability.  Sometimes that hurts and is hard but it's what big people do.  It's easy to use complacency as an excuse.  And that is why I threw away the Christmas decorations and found a replacement that better fits my family today.  I'm sure there will be a little pissing and moaning but at the end of the day, it's all good.  There is a tree and lights and a few familiar memories.

And some space for stretching out.

Addled.

Lately I've felt especially untethered.  Teetering.  Unbalanced.  Without roots.

I suppose this feeling could be attributed to the change in weather or lack of sunlight that is ubiquitous right now.  Or the looming holiday season ahead with all its accompanying busyness.  It seems that this time of year always has me feeling somewhat self-destructive.  I spend money I don't have on things I don't need.  I have no appetite and stop eating.  I sleep too much and then not at all.  I quit feeling any emotions and then grasp at anything that causes me to get the feels, however small or fleetingly, and then end up making bad choices.  In people, in words, in whisky, in general.

There is also a tiny bit of good that comes out of this time and that is a deepened sense of introspection. An increase of self-awareness.  But that, unfortunately, leads me to feeling even more off-kilter.

I'm keenly aware of how strange my life has become.

I was walking with a friend the other morning and I was trying to find a way to clearly express to her how I was feeling.  I searched for the words and found a few analogies that seemed fitting.  I told her to imagine what that it felt like if you had spent your whole life trying to put together a huge puzzle which you thought was a picture of a field of sunflowers but it was really a picture of a snowy mountain range instead.  All this time your were trying to use blue and white and grey pieces to make a yellow and green and brown picture and you were not even finished with the edges yet.  Or imagine if you tried to play Monopoly using only the CandyLand board and playing pieces.  Or think about trying to follow a recipe to bake a chocolate cake from scratch and the only ingredients you have in your kitchen are for making venison and vegetable stew.

That is how I feel.  

Like I'm ill-equipped to succeed in this world.  That my ideals and values are neither true or realistic.  I feel as if my life has been nothing more than a mirage.  An illusion of reality.  I feel as if I have been inadequately prepared for "the real world" and I'm too old to relearn what to do.

I mean, was there a class that I missed somewhere?  Did everyone else take this Real World 101 class and I was just building a rocket out of a large cardboard box because I tested TAG?  (This is actually a true event!)  Maybe I was reading a book during this particular class period?

It just seems like I'm the only person who cannot grasp the rules of life.  Everyone else is playing this game and I'm just standing on the sideline trying to figure out what the hell is going on.  What is the object of the game?  Where is the freaking ball?  Who is on which team?  Is someone keeping score?  Is that against the rules?  Do I need special equipment to play this game?  Am I being judged on my ability to play?  Does this uniform make my ass look huge?

Everyone else seems to get it.  And it's all foreign to me.

Just an Indentation.

I caught up on some yard work during the Indian Summer weather we were fortunate enough to have  a few weeks ago.  Pruned, replanted, tore out, weeded.  Just basic yard maintenance stuff.  I got pretty filthy and ended up with a few well-earned blisters on my hands.  Nothing a good shower and a thorough scrubbing of my hands with Lava soap couldn't fix.  And during that hand washing moment I noticed something.  There, on my ring finger, is the still-obvious ridge of where my wedding ring used to be.

I took my ring off a year after Bill died.  I wore it on a chain around my neck for a while.  I had his band re-sized to fit on my right hand a week after he died.  It will remain there.  But I'm not sure why I took off my own gold band.  Well, that's not totally true.  I removed it as sort of an experiment, trying out how it would feel to be naked of that symbol after so many years.  Probably a first step in living alone.  Or at least a first step in that direction.  There's a little more to this part of the story actually and I'm not up to telling it right now but trust me when I say that I took the ring off for the right reasons.

When I look at the indentation on my finger it makes me feel just how much being alone sucks.

Oh, I can be OK on most days.  I don't mind getting up in the morning by myself because Bill was only home in the mornings on the weekends.  There's nothing foreign to me about morning solitude.  And I can be pretty much alright in the course of the afternoon too.  I stay plenty busy at work or catching up at home.  I even do reasonably OK in the evening hours because prior to his death Bill had worked a strange shift that brought him home at night around 11:00PM.  Again, I was used to solitude in the evenings.  But, oh the nighttime.  Nighttime is a whole different story.

I don't think I will ever get used to it.

At the end of the day all the things I think of to talk about and no one here to listen to me.  No one to plan for the future with.  No one to dream up an adventure with.  No one to "remember when" with.  Hear a scary sound outside?  I'm the one who has to check it out now.  Make sure the fire is going, fill the coffee pot, set the mousetrap.  All me now too.

Sometimes I let myself remember a boring, typical evening from before.  But I quickly tuck it back away in my mind because the simple contentedness of such times makes my heart hurt.  When I absentmindedly go to twirl the ring on my finger (nervous habit) and realize that it's no longer there I am flooded with regrets and self-pity and hopelessness.  Funny how a little gold band (no diamonds for me--too high maintenance) can make me feel so helpless and sad.  Claustrophobic about life and choices and the future.

This life I have right now is not the life I anticipated ever having to live.  It is a far, far cry from the life we built together.  My entire identity was woven with the threads of "us."  I know that "letting go" is my only choice.  But I just haven't quite figured out how to actually do that.  How do you choose what parts to let go of and what parts should remain?  Can any parts remain?  Lots to think about.

Just a tiny indentation but it represents an entire world.

Night Light.

When I was a little girl I made it a regular habit to get out of bed at night.  I don't remember if I was actually scared of the dark, which is likely, or if I just had to pee, which is also likely.  Either way, I would get out of my bed and go searching for the light.  That part I remember.  I would gather my blanket and a pillow and creep out of my bedroom into the hallway.  There was always a small ray of light that came in through my bedroom window from the streetlight outside and settled on the floor in the hall.  I think the patch of light was probably about a foot wide.  It was in that little area of illumination that I would spread out my blanket and lay down, my face always turned toward the light.  Only in the light could I fall back asleep.

I revisited this memory (or maybe the memory revisited me?) tonight when I got into bed.  There was the nearly-full moon, shinning in my window, lighting up a small space on my pillow.  Instinctively I turned my face to the brightness and felt the familiar comfort I had felt as a little girl.  Almost like deja vu.

Funny how something as small as this can bring such peace.

Love, Hate, and Indifference.

So, I had another epiphany on my run yesterday.

I was thinking about how people have moved in and out of my life.  That's a completely normal thing to happen so I'm not saying I'm worried about this.  It happens to everyone.  Sometimes it happens because lives go in different directions.  Sometimes it's because our commonality changes.  Sometimes our need for one another is modified enough that we go our separate ways.  And sometimes, sometimes we just no longer like each other.  And that brings me to my latest run-induced insight.

If I asked you to tell me what the opposite of love was what would you say?  Would you say "hate"?  I think most people would give me that answer.  But really, I think the complete opposite of hate is indifference.  Irrelevance.  Unimportance maybe.

You see, love is an emotion.  A sketchy, fickle emotion but an emotion just the same.  Love is full of ups and downs and those troublesome things called "feelings."  Love makes you feel good.  And sometimes it makes you feel bad for a while but probably so you can feel good when it resurfaces again. A cycle.  A cycle full of passion and depth and intensity.

And now let's talk about hate.  Hate is also an emotion.  It's just coming at us from the other end of the emotional spectrum.  Just like acids and bases are opposites on the pH scale but both have the power to dissolve and destroy objects, so it is with hate.  It has an equal amount of passion and depth and intensity.

Love comes barreling at us, full speed, from the left side while hate comes barreling at us, full speed, from the right side.  Makes sense, yes?

So I've realized that the opposite, contrasting feeling of love is indifference.  Within indifference there is the absence of passion.  There is the lack of depth and there is the void of feelings.   Complete disregard and uncaring.  Now that is the divergent sentiment to love.

I've come to believe that where hate exchanges places with love there is the presence of a deep anguish.  Maybe a trust has been broken or an expectation was not met.  There might be lies or cheating or cruel actions and words.  Hell, sometimes I think we might be so frustrated and guilt-ridden with our own actions that we project our self-hatred onto innocent folks.  But really it doesn't matter so much as to what took place or why.  The resulting hatred is a manifestation of unfulfilled expectations.  To ourselves or to others.

Where there is hate there is still fervor and feelings.  Where there is indifference, well, there is nothing left.  A void.  A vacuum.  And to me, that is a very scary idea.  When you arrive at that place I don't believe there is a return ticket back.

How To Choose

I went camping this weekend.  More specifically I went camping, with kids, by myself, at the end of a very curvy and steep (can you say cliff?) road.  Well, that's not a completely accurate statement.  I actually went camping with a load of very good friends but the driving part and the kids part is totally true.

 I detest packing and unpacking a car.  I stress over the planning of the logistics of a trip.  I don't really like traveling by myself.  I really, really dislike driving steep, cliff-edged roads.  Coordinating kids and their ensuing safety, eating, and sleeping needs whilst traveling causes enough anxiety to render me unable to enjoy myself.  And don't even get me started on the chaos that inevitably greets me once I return home.

But I did it.  I camped with kids and fed them football field nachos for dinner.  No one showered for days and I cannot begin to imagine how many cans of soda were consumed.  I drank beer in a parking lot and bourbon under the stars.  I even drove winding roads, albeit slowly, and got us where we needed to be.  In one piece!

I noticed on the way home that the vineys are starting to turn.  And I remembered how Bill would always find them at his job and cut several branches to bring home to me.  In fact, I don't think I considered Fall to have begun until he'd brought me home some of those maple branches.

Wham.  And the sadness slips in again.

A while back, I had someone send me a little blurb they'd found on Facebook probably.  Something about choosing a person who wanted to take care of you, not materialistically, but someone to take care of your heart and your soul.  Those maples made me think about those words.

Maybe we should choose to have people in our lives who will take the time to cut the branches or pick the wild flowers just because they know it will make us smile.  And maybe we should choose the person who will bring us licorice or gummy bears just because they know it's our favorite candy.  Or the one who will sweep or vacuum the mess off the floor because they know how much it annoys you and prevents you from relaxing on the sofa.  The one who knows your favorite song and remembers the name of the dog you had as a kid.  We should surround ourselves with the people who just sit and listen to our talking because they understand that putting those words into the air takes away some of their sting.

I guess it all comes down to finding people who want to quietly bring comfort and kindness and happiness into your life.  With no agenda.  Just to see you happy.  It seems like a simple idea but I'm finding that it's rather rare to find people like this.  Seems like there's an awful lot of selfish, cold, blind folks who can't figure out why their lives are so empty and sad.

And I think about those words again.  Heart and soul.  Fill them up with unselfish love.    

I do believe I can find some of those vine maples to cut by myself.  And I'm pretty sure that this time I'll share them with someone else.