...in the end.

Warning: Long Bumpy Road Ahead. (This usually happens when I have gone missing from life for a period of time!)

            The good news…I am fine. The bad news…I am old (though a very young old). A little shoulder issue popped back up, and off I ran to my little corner of the universe. It’s true, there are times when I live my life in a social vacuum. This is not worrisome to anyone who knows me well. I am, in fact, nearly famous for being my own, favorite, best friend. I have always liked to spend time alone. It does both my body and mind good.

            But in some ways, it furthers my tendency to put my head in the sand. It certainly is not happenstance that my recent withdraw from the world, coincides with the Boston Marathon bombings. I don’t talk news, the way others don’t talk politics or religion. For me, it is a survival instinct, for my own emotional well being. I am too easily overwhelmed with others pain.

            When I realized this fully, a few years back, I decided the simple answer was to not expose myself to others pain, within reason. I stopped watching TV news, altogether. I noticed an immediate lightening of my heart. I cut out reading the daily paper. My days were less frenetic. I started just skimming the online news and not listening to the radio as much. My friendships blossomed.

            And although I am still aware of the cataclysmic events that occur in life, I don’t internalize them as much. Not as easy to do when the hurts are more personal and the people you care about hurt. Sometimes, putting your head in the sand…it works. Other times, not so much.

            I think that is what I want to talk about today. I suddenly see my actions, not so much as social irresponsibility, but as personal choice…part of the crap shoot of life. As a result of my behaviors, I have learned a little about my own personal limits. Repeated exposure to domestic and international wrongdoings, shortcomings and intentional offenses make me weak. Skimming the surface keeps me whole. And it gives me more energy to deal with things that hurt on a more personal level, the things I won’t shut out.

           

            As I am thinking this, I am trying to find some inspiration for a friend who I am sure would treasure the luxury of putting his head in the sand. He can’t. And although he is a brilliant man, talented and fun, and generous beyond belief, life is taking a major dump in his steel cut oats (Wheaties are so yesterday!).

            I am hoping he will see the humor in my understatement, because, honestly, laughter is all that is left sometimes. Laughter and hope…

            Realistically, life is being actively cruel to my friend, and that is not funny. This is a man who takes responsibility for where he comes up short. But he didn’t come up short in this case. Life did. Events beyond his control shook his core, and on a personal level, (and so many other levels) left him feeling more than defeated. How does anyone deal with that?

            I can imagine that the way he is feeling is not completely unlike the way I have felt at times in my life. For me, those big catastrophes just help me keep my own crap in perspective. It helps me look at my life as if I were on the outside, looking in.

            The big things appear impossible to fathom, unthinkable even, to believe that some single event can happen and turn a person’s life on a dime. It carries profound sadness, and incredibly, sometimes an overly punishing self examination. It is overwhelming and all consuming. It hurts…it quiets your laughter and squashes your hope.

           

            Personal stuff, small in terms of the universe, but tremendous in our daily life, works the same way. And I think the only way to balance this and push forward is to remember, there are even larger scale calamities than your own. Pain and suffering are everywhere. But despite life’s cruelty, there is hope. It is fleeting, irregular and difficult to grasp. And it is cyclical, but that is the greatest source of hope, for me, in a convoluted, sort of “And this too shall pass…” way.

            When life is falling apart, sometimes some good things sneak in anyway. I think the universe allows that to help us maintain a certain equilibrium.

            Knowing of the little things that sneak in, and the passage of time, mixed with the phase you feel stuck in, helps you to remember to have hope. Even if it is the hope that while the bad will become good at some point, unfortunately, the opposite is also true.     But once you know it, you can ride those waves, without going under every single time. I want my friend to visualize the hope lying out there, trying to make its way to shore. It is slow in coming, but it does eventually get there…just like that white cap you set your eyes on, and watch, slowly, almost painfully, wash up to shore, but only if you are very  patient. ‘Cause it is always further out than you initially realize.

            Yes, you need to participate to make things better in your life. But you also need great patience and hope. And laughter always helps, even if the laugh is a half-hearted chuckle, or a sardonic giggle.

           

            If I could I would give my friend a hug, and distract him with a pep talk. I would say “My friend, times will become good again! I believe it with all my heart. And I know it from experience. I have years beyond you, that have proven it to me, over and over again. And I happen to know, that too many people care, to ever let you fall beyond your ability to get up.”

            I would reassure him. I would show him what I see. “You work hard. You have already conquered seemingly insurmountable tasks. Life knows you can take it even though inside you have doubts and simply pray for a reprieve. You will handle all that this incredibly mysterious life throws at you. Yu have done it before and you will do it this time, too.”

            I would breath. I would remind him to breath. And I would continue.

            “Though on a daily basis, you may be focused on the insufficient balance in your checkbook, your mind is always working, and one day, you will find a way to tip the balance. All your struggles have not been in vain. Life is cyclical. Your cycle will return to a positive place, regardless of your beliefs.”

            If he hasn’t killed me yet, for being too Pollyanna-ish, I would load on more platitudes…because I believe them. “All you have worked for and accomplished in life, will one day be apparent to you, again. I know this much to be true, from my own very ego centric life, and from the world.”

           

            He would probably think I am full of S$*t. But something might stick or click, or remind him that hope has helped in the past.

            It’s Mother’s Day. My son is home from college. The dog and turtle happily exist seemingly for my pleasure, and my boys (father and son) are sleeping in. I have a hot cup of coffee, and plenty to read and write today. All is right in my world. Of course I have some worries, but I can push them aside today. But it was not always this way.

           

            I think back to when I was struggling, as a thirty something, single, pregnant woman. So many people helped me through, at that time. I honestly am never sure I would have made it without the daily help from my oldest sister and brother in law. Together with their kids, my first niece and nephew, they emotionally “took me in”. And that is a gross understatement. They also gave me hope and joy and tons of laughter.

            My brother and his family, helped as well. His wife, who can appear aloof at times, was her very warmest then. Their kids distracted me from myself with more fun and joy, a preview into my future. So they made me laugh in measured spurts.

            Between them all, they made sure I ate right, took care of the details of my life (not always well), planned for the baby, simplified my expectations and helped me stay the scary course of being single, pregnant, and worried. I foolishly never worried about my baby. I knew I would move heaven and earth to make his life good. But I did wonder, endlessly, about how I would accomplish that.

            I stumbled a lot. I repeatedly made bad choices…due to lack of self confidence or simply being overwhelmed? It didn’t matter. I hit road blocks, and although what I wanted was within my grasp, sometimes I didn’t stretch far enough. And in more moments than I care to remember, I faltered by devaluing my own self worth. It was a huge miscalculation. But it was my reality at that time.

            Luckily I had another sister (three more actually, and though the other two offered less tangible support, it was all support!). But the third sister also had a child. She stepped in, and in one fell swoop, outfitted my son for the first seven years of life. She handed me down her son’s furniture, clothing, carriers, even bottles and dishes.

            None of the things she gave me were new, though much of it looked as if it were, because she took great care with her son’s things. Still, amidst all my other worries, I wondered if I was cheating my son, by giving him a life of hand me downs. I knew what that felt like as the fifth of six kids.

            Luckily, I realized that “handed down” had history. And I began to see it as good karma. My nephew was healthy and happy. Those good vibes were attached to everything he had used before my son. And that suggested to me that my son would share his cousin’s good karma.

           

            After all, there are worse things in life than hand me downs. I lived through my Barbie dolls having lost limbs before I got them handed down from Annie, Louie and Beth. And I think Joni, benefited from the tube tops and mini-skirts I knitted for them, since their cloths were long since gone.

            I don’t suffer from having used naked, broken crayons (whose paper covers told the real name); it made me use my imagination to match them names from the color words I knew. I wrapped them in white paper and labeled them myself.

            It wasn’t all great. I hated hand me down uniform blouses, with their sweet, girlie peter pan collars and yellow “pitted out” underarms, from repetitive use. But I learned that the first one up was the best one dressed. I set my alarm early enough to try to score a pair of green knee socks that would stay up around my knees. (Were those few minutes of sleep sacrificed worth the freedom, to not have to put rubber bands around the socks, cutting off my circulation for at lease eight hours? Yes, I still laugh when I think about how I learned of the myriad trade offs life requires.)

            Sometimes my patience was stretched farther than the rubber bands, but it was a character building exercise. And in the overall scheme of my life, those memories are relegated to reminiscing about surviving a large family. I might (read definitely) have done better as an only child, but I lived through what life handed me, and I have good memories of us all bickering. I can hear Mom telling us to ‘simmer down’, or she was going to come up with the dreaded paint paddle!

            Yes, my parents beat us horribly. Someone call Dr. Spock and CPS, immediately! Oops, too late…and somehow I have lived to tell the tale. And actually, I don’t ever remember actually getting ‘the stick’. Someone always managed to crack Mom or Dad up (dramatic much, Beth?) until they were laughing so hard they couldn’t follow through on the threat to paddle our rumps! And we spent endless hour when they were out of the house, finding places to hide it.

            So, with these realizations that I survived my own childhood, I headed into my son’s life thinking we might make it. I had my family behind me, and the incredible warmth and generosity of friends…how could we fail? It wouldn’t be easy, but yeah, my little boy and I were off to a good start! And then I blinked…and now he is a young man.

            So much happened while I was blinking. My little Sully and I fell in love with an incredible man, Paul. We married and became a family…legal in every way…real in every way. And loving each other is never an issue.

            But it wasn’t always that way. I had a lot of doubts. Early on, I tried my damnedest to chase Paul away. When I look back, I realize that being a single mother was challenging, but I kinda liked it!

            Did I really want a traditional (sort of) family? Was I willing to share my son? Did I really think I could hack the whole monogamy thing? Loving Paul was easy. But was loving only him, even going to be possible? And I already had a big family…did I really want to make it bigger? A father or husband was not mandatory in my little universe.

            Sure he was handsome and smarter than crap…Okay, he was fun, funny, and he and my kid became the next best thing to salmon and lox. Really? My Mom and Dad love him…and my siblings are fascinated with him! And his family…his parent’s, they’re like hitting the in-law jackpot! And he cooks.

            Well that made me stop and think. He cooks really well. And I did always want to marry a bi-lingual man, ‘if I did ever get married’. He speaks Long Island! So, it’s just a variation on English…but it’s better than nothing!

            Yup. We married him. We are completely and totally in love with him. He is a wonderful father, an amazing provider. He brings us joy, and hope and so much laughter. And life is perfect.

            REWIND! Did I really just say that? Clearly that was a mistake. Our life is full of struggles. And we disagree about a lot of things. And he is good at things that I am not so good at. And that pisses me off. And I have a few qualities up my sleeve that get his goat. We’re really kind of out of control most of the time.

              

            But I wondered…was Paul the good, peeking through the bad? Or was he just going to be a source of more trails and struggles. It didn’t matter. Life just evolved. Once I fell in love with him, it was sort of written.

            So, I was doing things backwards! No one really seemed to care…except me. Feeling a need to make order of my chaotic life, I used to tell my son “First God gave me Kvichak (my puppy) to teach me how to care for another living being. And when I was good at that, he sent you to me, so you could teach me how to love and take care of a person. And you did teach me! So God gave us Daddy.”

            It seemed contrived, yet it made a lot of sense to me and my sweet three year old. Sometimes I just need to have things make sense. So I make them up, and a lot of the time, it works.

           

            How does any of this relate to my friend? It’s just evidence that in my experience, life is all ups and downs…this crazy life we are all negotiating. Some of it is of our own doing, some of it isn’t. But in the end, it is all ours to deal with. And it is important at the most trying times to appreciate that even though things suck…there is still something good going on, to hold on to…And if you can’t see it, you can just hope for it, soak in the little joys, and laugh your way through it.

           

            At one point, just shortly before Paul came into our lives, when my son was still very young, I was talking to my parents about the struggles I was going through. I asked them how they had managed. They were younger when they started their family, and they had six of us. They smiled at each other and laughed.
            “Oh, Peg. It is easy for you to forget. We had it easy. You kids just seemed to understand our limits.”

            “But it never felt like there were any, Mom? We had good food, a really nice home…there were always incredible presents…”

            “We’re glad you see it that way, and although you guys were a joy, life was not always one. A lot of tears were shed.” Mom looked at Dad. “O (short for Owen), remember how we used to pay the bills?”

            He smiled and took over the story. “Every month, we sat down together and went through the bills, and wrote out every check as if we had the intention of paying. The only problem was we didn’t have the money to pay them all when they were due.”

            I stared at my Dad, in disbelief. This was the man who had taught me to live without debt, to save, to pay myself first, to budget…

            “So, when we were done, we took the stack, prioritized absolute necessities, then took what was leftover, and wrapped it in a loose rubber band.”

            Mom jumped in. “We took the banded envelopes with their payments included, to the bottom of the full flight of steps, in the house in West Chester. We took turns in alternate months, throwing the stack to the top. What landed up top became our first priority. What landed on the steps below…we sold our souls to pay off, slowly.”

            “Peg,” Dad added, “we knew there would be interest, and penalties, but we called every vendor or provider and told them ‘we can’t pay this month, but have full intention of honoring our debt.’ It wasn’t fun. It was more than humbling. But eventually, we made it.”

            “How?” I was dumbfounded.

            “We laughed a lot. We loved a lot. And we worked hard. And eventually we learned that we needed to save, even if we couldn’t afford it, because without that, we would never get ahead. We educated ourselves about finances. Before money came into the house, we made sure a portion was deducted to be saved, to insure our future. And the economy changed for the better for a time, and we became more confident, and we learned to live within our means. It’s never one thing, honey…Peg, sometimes you have to get creative!”

            “I knew we weren’t wealthy, but I never knew you struggled.”

            “We did!” Dad threw his arm around my shoulder. “And Slugger, it was worth every bit of scrimping and angst. And now…we look back and laugh. Well, we never stopped laughing, though sometimes it was through our tears. And there were disagreements and moods, but in the end, laughter always prevailed. We had six beautiful healthy children. That was a miracle. We were so exponentially blessed. What did we have to feel sad about?”

            I was awestruck. I assumed they would judge every mistake I had made. I assumed they had naturally, always been successful, and never made an unplanned move. I thought this was true of everyone except me. I was wrong.

            “No one goes through life unscathed, sweetie.” Mom smiled.

            ‘Unscathed’ had been Mom’s final crossword puzzle answer that morning. It was the word where she was forced to borrow Dad’s eraser.  When she went to pick it up, she couldn’t find it! They always shared one eraser, even though we had thousands in the house. One area we were never “poor” in was office supplies! (Another blog for another time!) So they were sharing a short squat little eraser top from a mechanical pencil, as always. “O, where is the eraser?”

            “I put it right in front of you, Whiz (Louise)!”

            They looked down at the spot where the eraser should have been…and there sat the pill Mom thought she had just swallowed. She spit the words out through gasps of laughter. “Oh, well, it’ll all work out in the end.”

            And like so many other days, some sad, some hopeful, a lot troubled, a few ultimately thankful, they laughed. Mom was a nurse. She had raised six children of her own. After all of that, a little pencil eraser wasn’t going to throw her. “Guess I won’t take any Metamucil today…” she giggled. “Metal and rubber have got to be high fiber.”

           

            So…I guess what I am trying to say, is, I learned that no matter how daunting life seems at any given moment, there is always hope. My parents were a study in hope. First they hoped for children. Second they hoped to be able to afford us. Their list of hopes went on.

            They hoped to protect us from the cruelties of life and they hoped to raise us to become strong, independent adults. They hoped we would have our own hope, to help in the trying times of our lives, when we would no doubt, face struggles similar to theirs. They always hoped, that they would continue to find hope.

            Hope and laughter…And by the time each of them left this earth, most, though by no means all, of their struggles were far behind them. Struggle is a constant in life. It is a sign that you are alive. And despite their hopes for their six kids, we have all had our own struggles. But none of us has given up hope.

            Mom and Dad never forgot their struggles. They taught us to be mindful. And they gave us hope...Hope and laughter, heavy on the laughter. Dad did so despite his worries. Mom was a little more laid back on the surface. She always reminded us, “It will all work out in the end.”

Thanks Mom. Happy Mother’s Day!

Thanks Sully, for making me a Mom.

Thanks Paul, for making me always strive to be a better Mom!

Happy Anniversary to all of us.

And now, its time to go laugh, and love, and live. And I hope…well, I hope a lot of things!