Posts Tagged ‘family’

Safe harbor

Friday, June 14th, 2013

I am working on assembling three years’ worth of blog posts, columns, and notes into a book called (what else?) A Decided Difference. I am also working on jazzing up the website, beginning with adding photos and illustrations to the blog. The real website people are programming.  Look for their lovely changes soon.

I needed an editorial and production assistant. Well, mainly I needed someone to help keep me on track and do some of the grunt work. My teenage goddaughter, Annabelle, needed a part-time summer job. She’s a smart girl, good with English, and very artistic. Plus, like most teenagers, she works for cheap.

After two days of working together, we have made quite a bit of progress. You will see some of her photography beginning next week, but today, I wanted to share a drawing she made for me.

Annabelle's compass

 

See what I mean about her artistic ability?  She sketched this out at the kitchen table in just a few minutes. I found the artwork lovely, but it was the sentiment that made me really think.

“You are the compass that guides me to shore.” Isn’t that something we all need?

More than that, don’t we all need to be the compass for others?

Sometimes in this life, we can all feel alone. At times, I have felt lost, like no one understood me. I know how it feels when the shore is out of sight, and I know the fear that I will never find it again. Thankfully, I also know the joy of finally spotting the safe harbor in the distance.

Even if we feel alone, we never truly are. There is always someone who cares, whether you know it or not. I am lucky, blessed beyond belief, to have so many caring friends and a great family to support me. I am also lucky, blessed beyond belief, to have others to care for. I often write about putting up strong boundaries when others need or want too much, but being able to care for others is a huge part of living the charmed life.

Thanks for the reminder, Annabelle! You are my compass, too.

 

 

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Two words

Monday, May 27th, 2013

sandcastle-1

Trust is like a sandcastle.  It must be built slowly and carefully, and it is easily destroyed.  How do we cope with betrayal by “friends?”  How do we trust our own judgment after mistakes?

Learning the effective use of two-word sentences can help you stay happy and mentally healthy.  Try these!  ”Shut up.”  Think that’s rude?  ”So what?”  Try this one, too.  ”Stay away.”

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Personal sacraments

Thursday, May 9th, 2013

When I was learning about a church I once belonged to, I learned this definition of a sacrament: an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. A sacrament was something you did to show something you felt. Sacraments, such as baptism or holy communion, were always steeped in rituals.

One by one, my children and I left that church. Yet, even my older daughter, the first to go, still enjoyed the rituals when she visited. I have come to believe that humans have a deep need for rituals, because they allow us to express our meaning with actions. The spiritual is made visible.

I know many of my peers have become disillusioned with religion and/or churches.  At the same time, it seems to me that the celebration of secular holidays has blossomed. Halloween was not that big a deal when I was a kid. Now it rivals Christmas in the decorations in my neighborhood. Observing holiday rituals marks the passing of time, the turning of the seasons, and the handing down of tradition to the next generation.

But there is not a prescribed ceremony for every passing, turning, or change in our lives.  Weddings conclude with “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” The passage from single to married is publicly acknowledged; the moment is marked.  Divorces have no such moment; papers may arrive in the mail announcing your transition back to singleness has been processed.  Birthdays are celebrated, but dates of death go unnoticed except maybe for Elvis or another famous person.

This brings us to the idea of personal sacraments, rituals observed by one person, or two, or maybe within a small, intimate group.  A friend’s family gathers at the cemetery every new year to “have a beer with mom and dad.”  Another friend lights a candle to burn all day on the day her mother died.  In another family, eating from a special red plate signifies reaching a personal milestone or attaining a goal.

I think we might benefit from deliberately creating rituals of our own. Intensely personal ceremonies can be actions that have meaning, even if only to us.

I remember two deliberately created rituals that held special meaning for me.  The first occurred just over six years ago, as my daughter and I prepared to move into our newly-constructed, post-broken-home house.  The builders would pour the cement back porch the next day.  We came to the building site, each of us bearing a token chosen for its personal meaning to us.

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We knelt in the sand where the porch would go and buried our tokens, a piece of coral from the beach for her, a green plastic frog for me.  As we put part of our hearts into its solid base, we blessed our new home. It has been a place of much happiness for us.

The second personal sacrament is a story I shall save for tomorrow, a special day in my world.

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The pull of tradition

Tuesday, November 20th, 2012

It is Thanksgiving week in the United States, and as usual, I begin to feel the pull of tradition as the holiday season commences.

There was a time in my life, especially when I was a young mother, that I felt both the comfort of tradition and its tyranny. I wanted the good feeling of holidays past, and I wanted to create good feelings for my husband and children. It sounds simple, but as any woman who has planned, shopped, chopped, cooked, cleaned, decorated, polished, trimmed, and coordinated will tell you, it can be exhausting. It is especially tiring if you are the only one doing all the preparation. Sometimes, it’s so much work to pull off a holiday celebration, we need a holiday (in the European sense, a vacation) to recover. This is supposed to be fun?

I will never forget one year, when I was worn to a raveling from preparing for multiple office, family and church Christmas celebrations, scheduled one after another. I always worked so hard to have the house glowing with lights, trimmed in greenery and ribbons, and smelling sumptuous. I loved Christmas, and it gave me great pleasure to know I was making others happy. No detail was too small for my attention. Unfortunately, I often bit off more than I could chew. This particular year, I had let time get away from me, again, and I made the mistake of asking my husband for help with the vacuuming. He said he would do it, but he didn’t. I needed that task completed before I could finish setting up for a big meal. When I pressed him, perhaps a little too intensely due to my own stressed-out feeling, he growled at me, “You always do this! Every year you just ruin Christmas.”

My thesaurus offers “unwritten law” as a synonym for “tradition.” The unwritten laws in my head said Christmas had to be done just so, with traditions from our families of origin held intact and new traditions of the family we had created layered on. The laws said as a homemaker, it was up to me to do it all. The laws said, to be a success, I had to create a Christmas that was gourmet, home-baked, beautifully wrapped, glowing and sparkling. Being relaxed and enjoying the festivities myself wasn’t even on the list.

It is now.

Tomorrow, I will prepare dishes to take to my brother’s house for Thanksgiving. I will bake pies and make dressing. The dressing my family loves is a lot of work. I’ll bake, chop, saute, stir, season, and bake again, taking several hours to create just one dish. This year, however, I will do it mindfully and joyfully, because of an idea I had several years ago.

That year, I was up late the night of December 23, making fruit salad. The recipe was my grandmother’s, and my eyes filled with tears as I thought of how much I missed her at holidays. Suddenly, I thought of how she had stood at her sink, just as I was standing at mine, rinsing and peeling the apples, sectioning the oranges, halving the grapes and removing the seeds. My hands were going through the same motions hers had, my heart feeling the same love for family that hers had. At that moment, I knew, my best friend across the street was standing in her kitchen, making the traditional foods of her husband’s ancestors, kibbi and cabbage rolls. Millions of women (and men, too) across the country were standing at their sinks and stoves, slicing and stirring. We were all family, a family of humanity, each of us loving our individual families, the movements of our hands dancing a ballet of caring. What did it matter that our feet hurt or that we would be up half the night rolling out dough? It wasn’t food we were cooking up, it was love.

And so, tomorrow night, as I saute the sausage and bake the pumpkin pie, my heart will be full of thoughts of my family and friends stirring up love in their kitchens. My friend in Atlanta will be brining a turkey. My sister in New Mexico will be chopping and stirring. My friend in northern California will be whipping up something delicious for her large brood of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Or maybe this year, she will relax and savor, watching them put their new twists on her traditions, knowing that the one most essential ingredient never changes.

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Mom to the world

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

Last night, I met with some other moms at the cheer coach’s house to plan a banquet for our daughters’ team. The coach introduced us by our first names to her daughter’s boyfriend. As each of us were introduced, we said our daughter’s name, because he knows all of them. I laughed and said, “I don’t have a name. I’m just Katherine’s mom.”

I have been a mother for 27 years now, and I have grown accustomed to being known as my daughters’ mom. There have been times when I had to struggle to define and retain my own identity outside the role of “Mom.” Sometimes there still are. It is a common problem among my friends. I believe it will get easier when my youngest daughter flies from the nest, but for now, I’m still in Mom mode most of the time. We are also hosting a lovely French exchange student this school year, and being a “host mom” had held its own set of joys and challenges. I take pride in being a good mom, but sometimes I do feel like mothering is all that I do.

When I returned home from the meeting last night, my husband told me about a commercial he had seen for the Apple iPhone, in which a young man told his virtual assistant Siri to call him “Rock God.” I recently acquired the same phone, and I have been learning to use Siri to help me. I thought it would be funny to have Siri call me, “Ma’am.”

I picked up my phone and opened the Siri app. “Siri,” I instructed, “I want you to call me ma’am.”

“Okay,” her robot voice intoned, “From now on I will call you Mom. Okay?”

I looked at the screen. It displayed, “From now on I will call you ma’am. Okay?” But she pronounced it “mom.”

What the heck? Everybody else calls me mom. So I said, “Okay.”

“Mom,” she said. “That has a nice ring to it.”

And so it does.

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A life well-lived: Marguerite Clark, 1918-2011

Monday, October 31st, 2011

My mother-in-law, a beautiful woman by anyone’s standards, passed away last week. At a family gathering the next day, one of my sisters-in-law noticed my engagement ring and admired it. I said, “If you think the ring is nice, you ought to see the guy that goes with it.” She threw her head back and laughed, “Mom is still here!”

It was without question one of the best compliments I have ever received.

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My husband’s mother, Marguerite Clark, lived to be 93. During her teenage years, she suffered a terrible bout with tuberculosis that kept her isolated from her family and friends for more than two years. Her sweetheart went off to war. When he returned safely home, doctors advised her not to marry him, saying that her body was permanently weakened and that she should not have children. Against their advice, she did marry. She brought up nine children, who gave her 33 grandchildren, who in turn blessed her with 45 great-grandchildren. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect she outlived every one of those doctors.

At her wake, literally hundreds of friends and family members gathered to reminisce and to tell her children what Marguerite had meant to them. Nearly every person remarked on her positive attitude and her smile, and they told of her impact on their lives.

Marguerite was an optimist, but she didn’t just accentuate the positive. She absolutely refused to acknowledge the negative. She loved her family with a tender fierceness and told her children every day that she loved them. She said that they were smart, beautiful, kind, and worthy of love. It’s no surprise that they grew up to be smart, beautiful, kind, and loving.

Many remembered Marguerite complimenting them until they were embarrassed to keep listening. Even when we visited her in a nursing home during her last weeks, she would tell us how beautiful and smart her caregivers were. The nurses and aides showered her with attention. She was so sweet that others were drawn to her like bees to nectar.

There is no question that Marguerite was tough. Anyone who survived tuberculosis, bore and raised nine children, and lived to be 93 years old was obviously tough. But more than that, she was smart. She knew that focusing on the positives brings more positives. She knew that love begets love. She knew that creating expectations of success promotes success. She could have taught Dr. Norman Vincent Peale a thing or two. Persistent optimism in the face of all of life’s challenges makes life easier, happier, and more satisfying, and Marguerite lived that way every day of her life. She passed her attitudes on to her children, and their lives are richer because of it.

I hope that I may be found similar to Marguerite Clark again in my lifetime. She practiced healthy thinking every day of her life, and hers is an example worth following.

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‘Tis the season

Monday, November 1st, 2010

Only 54 shopping days left until Christmas!

Remember when the phrase “the holidays” referred to some vague period in December centered around Christmas and New Year’s Day, with a nod to the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah? If you asked someone thirty years ago, “What are you doing for the holidays?” they would have understood you meant that time.

In 2010, the period of “the holidays” has stretched to include Thanksgiving, and Halloween is in danger of being consumed as well. A friend of mine even wrote a song about it, celebrating the rise of a new mega-holiday called HalloThanksMas Eve.

We tend to blame this shift on greedy retailers, aided and abetted by the advertising industry. We watch Thanksgiving become just a wide spot in the road rolling toward the big day of December 25. We bemoan the loss of “the true meaning of Christmas.”

Being a fully functioning member of the consumer culture, I am all for the success of the retail industry in the United States. Some of my best friends run retail stores for a living. Advertising used to pay my own rent. Selling items at retail and advertising are not evil in and of themselves.

What is really going on here? Do we ever question our own role in the creation of this holiday monster?

It’s a demonstrated principle of psychology that behavior that is rewarded is repeated. If advertising works to get us to spend more and more at Christmas, why wouldn’t it continue? If we buy into the notion that happiness can be bought, especially at Christmastime, aren’t we as much at fault as the retailers? They are just trying to make a living. What are we trying to do?

Does the idea of a perfect Christmas conjure up images of a close-knit extended family gathered for a feast around a beautifully-set table? Are candles and a fireplace glowing while snow falls gently outside? Does an evergreen tree sparkle with lights and ornaments, with piles of gaily-wrapped packages topped with fluffy bows piled underneath? Are the children’s cheeks rosy and their eyes dancing with anticipation? Do we have peace in our hearts because we have contributed to the well-being of the less fortunate?

Have you ever encountered a scene even remotely like this in your real life? Or is it a fantasy conjured up from an unholy melange of Charles Dickens, Currier and Ives, Norman Rockwell, and the Coca-Cola Santa?

We do not have to buy what the advertisers are selling. Little Johnny will survive if he doesn’t get an iPad for Christmas this year. He might even be better off if he saves his own money to buy it for himself. We know this. In spite of the knowledge, how many of us will find ourselves pulling out the plastic to charge the iPad anyway?

It can be easier to be pulled along by the currents than to think for ourselves. If what we really want at Christmas is peace in our homes, love among our friends and relatives, with a bit of feasting and revelry thrown in, we must each consider how best to achieve those goals. It may take the form of choosing to cut back on decorating, cooking, and entertaining. Maybe you want to increase those activities because you enjoy them. It may mean disappointing the grandparents when you choose to stay at home for Christmas this year instead of traveling. Then again, maybe the grandparents will be secretly relieved to be freed of the obligation of hosting. Friends may be glad to find you want to end the annual gift exchange in favor of a festive weeknight dinner.

The point is that we are each in charge of our own minds and hearts. We do not have to define our way of keeping Christmas by the opinions of others, whether the others are selling something or just trying to guilt us into continuing to do things the way we always have in the past.

Today is November 1. There is still plenty of time to decide how you would like to spend the rest of this year, including Thanksgiving and Christmas. I suggest thinking about it now and discussing it with the people who share your life. I highly recommend the methods in the book, Unplug the Christmas Machine to help in these endeavors.

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Deep impressions

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Most women I know have complicated relationships with their hair. We have the occasional good hair day, many days when our hair is just kind of “there,” and now and then, the pull-it-into-a-ponytail or put-on-a-hat disaster day.

I have somewhat unusual hair. It is very fine, very dry, and very curly. It has a mind of its own, and it doesn’t really bother with responding to gravity. It tends toward the great big Texas ‘do that was so popular in the 1980s. I do not go out on windy days without rubber bands or hair clips. I could be whipped to death by my own hair, which at best would look like I combed it with an egg beater.

When I think back on childhood, my hair memories are all painful, literally and figuratively. My poor mother had normal hair on her own head and not a clue what to do with the wild and woolly mop on mine. A generous application of cream rinse might render it manageable when wet, but once the curls dried, combing or brushing them was out of the question. Still, she tried mightily every morning, and I went off to school tear-stained and frizzy.

More painful than the brushing sessions were the terms applied to me regarding my hair. My grandmother nicknamed me “The Wild Bushman.” I frequently heard references to Brillo pads and endless variations on the frizzy/fuzzy theme. It seemed that my family never missed an opportunity to make fun of my hair, and it hurt.

I tried every hair miracle potion and every gizmo invented, beginning in the 1960s and continuing through the 1990s, but my hair would not be tamed. I settled for cutting it short and trying not to think about it. Sometime around the turn of the millennium, I discovered the book Curly Girl, and my outlook was forever changed. Lorraine Massey got it right, and I made peace with my hair at long last.

Funny thing, this peace-making. I started hearing new things about my hair. A friend said she had long admired my “goddess” locks. Strangers complimented me. I met and married a man who adores, of all things, my curly hair. As Lorraine Massey predicted, my life got better when I embraced my inner curl.

Recently, I went out to dinner with my daughter and my parents. I told them a story about sitting in my back yard one morning at sunrise. A bird flew around the corner of the house and almost crashed into me. I laughed and said we were both pretty surprised. My mother said, “He probably mistook your hair for a bird’s nest.”

Now, my mother is one of the sweetest, kindest women on the planet, and I am certain she was trying to be funny. But for a moment, all the old childhood hurt rushed back. For a moment, my heart caught in my chest.

I could have chosen to dwell on it, but I only thought about it long enough to remember that I am in charge of my own thoughts and feelings. I am all grown up now, and I get to decide which thoughts I keep and value and which I dismiss.

I’m going to dwell on how much I resemble a goddess.

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