On Presidents and Not Feeling Like a Grown-Up

With the Presidential inauguration today, I was thinking about what a tremendous amount of responsibility comes with the job. I mean, who actually feels qualified to take it on? He’s not all that much older than I am, President Obama. But when a pale shadow of the responsibility he shoulders falls over my life, my blood pressure rises as my confidence falls.

Put me in front of a desk, with a banker behind it, and watch how my hand trembles as I sign the mortgage papers. (As an aside, here’s further evidence of my immaturity – any time I have to sign official papers, I like to pretend I’m signing the Declaration of Independence, or else a pardon for Sirius Black.) But, back to the mortgage. Even though I have a life-long history of behaving responsibly with money, I still can’t believe someone will trust me with a loan amount that contains a comma. Imagine taking on the national debt.

“When I’m a grown-up…” These words echoed through my childhood. The prelude to my vows about the decisions I’d make, the ways in which I would take charge. But the truth is this: ever since I’ve been a grown-up, I’ve felt like a fraud.

On the rare occasion I have to call a professional of some sort, an attorney for instance, I always half-expect them to tell me to put my father on the phone. I wonder how Barack Obama felt the first time he dialed up Vladimir Putin.

Once, when my kids were little, I pointed to them and said to their dad, “We made new people. Other human beings. Are we allowed to do that?”

Sometimes it gobsmacks me, the knowledge that I was allowed to do such a monumental thing. And then there were all of the decisions that followed. Huge decisions sometimes. Decisions about schooling and medical treatments, decisions that shape their very lives. And I have to make those decisions, even when the voice inside me is yelling, “I don’t know what’s best. Ask someone who knows. Ask a grown-up.”

I agonize, because what I do will change the lives of two people. Multiply that by 150,00 million. Wow. I wouldn’t take it on.

When Being a Parent Pays Off

It was worth it, every bit of it – the pregnancy, the day and a half labor, the diapers, the sleep deprivation – for it was all leading here. This blackberry tart was made by my 17-year-old, and it was possibly the best dessert I have ever eaten. In. My. Entire. Life.

I’m not sure from whence her domesticity comes. But I’m impressed by her accomplishments in her newest field of interest – fandom-based cooking. Thanks to her, our New Year’s Day was filled with a feast of Hobbit/Lord of the Rings inspired baked goods. In addition to the tarts, she made tea cake, seed cake and yes, lembas bread. She even wrapped the bread in “leaves” (green paper) as the travelers did in the Lord of the Rings.

548136_4011167513380_705541218_n — Leaf-wrapped Lembas Bread

Life is Good

Life is good, and I can thank a friend for reminding me of this. I can get pretty stressed and down-hearted at times. But thank goodness for friends who can empathize just the right amount and then refuse to let me wallow.

The other day, I was lamenting to a friend about my problems and how difficult my life seems to be. I asked “Does it ever get simpler and easier or does it keep getting harder and more complicated?”

I suppose I was going on a bit. Because she reminded me of a previous conversation of ours, one in which we had shaken our heads over adolescence and its angst. We had shared our bemusement over the exclamation by a middle-class American teen from a stable family, who attended a good school and yet was able to say, with appropriate amounts of drama, “Nobody’s life is harder than mine!”

My friend reminded me how I had raised a skeptical eyebrow and said, “Really? What about a homeless, starving child in the streets of Calcutta who has scurvy?”

I don’t aim to say that middle-class American teens don’t have real problems that should be taken seriously, or that I don’t have real problems. But I needed that nudge to realign my perspective.

Yes, I spend a lot of time chasing paperwork for my mom – because I still have a mom. She’s still alive and loves me and can tell me so. That’s perspective on the daily details.

On the bigger picture, I’m fighting off a mid-life crisis in which I ponder the disappointments of things I thought I would have had or done and now I’m realizing time is running out and I’ll probably never have or do them. But the list of things I have received and experienced is so long, and many of them were blessing I never anticipated. So maybe the disappointments left room for the unexpected blessings.

Stress and disappointments are parts of my life, but only part, not the whole thing. I’ve heard you should count your blessing, but when I really put an effort into, I’m not sure I can. The numbers might not go high enough. I wrote in my last post that I’m experiencing a lot of endings in the season of my life. But for something to end, it has to have happened in the first place. I’m trying to hold onto an attitude of thankfulness for a good thing that happened more than disappointment over it not being eternal.

Nothing goes on forever. Not the good times, but also not the problems. As one of my aunt’s used to say, “Trouble don’t last.” In this holiday season, I’m realizing my life is pretty good. More good than bad.

The Day the Music Changed

I’m in a period of transition. There seem to be a lot of endings in my life right now, including an emotional one today. When you have a baby, you have years full of firsts – first tooth, first step, first day of school. Then, after a while, you start to realize there are lasts coming along.

This afternoon saw my 14-year-old son’s last piano lesson with the teacher who has guided him through half a lifetime of musical growth. The phrase “piano lessons” doesn’t convey what a gift our household has received from his weekly sessions with a wonderful mentor. I remember his very first time at the piano, with his little legs swinging from the bench, feet far from reaching the floor, as he learned to pick out a short tune on a few of the black keys only. Week by week, his knowledge and love of music grew, until he was composing his own pieces.

A few months ago, my son told me he didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do in life, but he knew it had to involve music. I know little about music, but he’s getting deep into music theory and explaining things to me that have been over my head. He saved his money and bought software that will allow him to work with composing and mixing on the computer. Last summer, when he was out of school, it wasn’t unusual for him to spend four or five hours in a day on his music.

Today, he told me that music has filled a gap in his life. He said he knows he’s never been good at carrying on conversations (he has auditory processing difficulties, so conversation is often difficult for him), but he can use music as a second language to express himself. I know it’s helped him through some rough patches and helped his confidence.

But with this growth has come an interest in expanding his skill set. One of his cousins gifted him a used guitar a while back, and he wants to learn to play that now. Neither time nor money will permit two sets of concurrent music lessons. So he’s switching to guitar for now. He promises me he’ll still play piano at home.

I sat in on his last lesson. He’s progressed from a small, round-faced child plunking out the 15-second song a key at a time to a deep-voiced young man with a newly noticeable shadow on his upper lip, who towers over both his teacher and me. He agreed to play Metamorphosis II by Philip Glass one last time for his teacher before he left. It was beautiful.

Wedging in Holiday Traditions – Christmas Tree Edition

As my kids get older, the calendar only gets more challenging. We still want the same family holiday traditions, but it takes more planning. For instance, we always buy a Christmas tree from the nearby Optimist Club lot. It’s a mere five-minute drive from our house. Easy peasy, right? Until we start looking at schedules.

We definitely wanted to get it done this past weekend, so we’d have time to enjoy the tree before it came back down. We couldn’t go Friday evening, because my husband had to work late. I was scheduled to work all day Saturday. Then my daughter had a thing Saturday evening. Sunday, I’d promised to buy some supplies for my mom and take them over in the afternoon. And there was a meeting I needed to attend in the evening. Meantime, my son had a collaborative homework project he had to schedule with some other kids.

I looked up the hours for the Christmas tree lot and discovered it opened at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday. There it was – our time slot. Arrive at 10:00, 15 minutes to look over the selections and make a choice, whole thing decorated by noon, and we had time to get our other stuff done. My daughter even dialed up an internet Christmas music station for us so we could listen to carols as we hung the ornaments.

Voting for Shut-Ins

I helped my mom vote today. She’s probably the reason I’ve never skipped an election since I turned 18. I’m following her example. She always, always voted. I remember going into the booth with her when I was little, back when they had the machines with levers.

I don’t know how it works other places, but I discovered that in my county, they will send poll workers out with ballots to allow shut-ins to vote. Pretty nifty and civic. Still, she wanted me there to help her read and fill out the ballot. Possibly she didn’t trust the election ladies (?)

I admit I had to bite my tongue on a couple of her selections. But I managed not to try to influence her vote. With tremendous self-discipline, I only marked what she wanted me to without comment. As if she’d let me. She still reads the newspaper, and she’s allowed to vote differently from me if she wants to. I wasn’t there to tell her how to vote, only to help her exercise her right as a citizen.If nothing else, it’s extra motivation for me to get out to the polls next Tuesday, so I can cancel her out on those couple of ballot items. Since I also believe in a secret ballot, I won’t mention which things or people we disagree on. I’m happy to share my opinions, but not hers.

It made me very happy to know my local government is serious in helping people cast their votes.And the poll workers were as nice as could be.

Letting Go of Childhood a Piece at a Time

“It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn’t.” – Barbara Kingsolver

I took a load of – I hate to call it clutter – let’s say I took a load of personal history to Goodwill today. It needed to be done. Outgrown clothes and some Zumba hand weight thingies I won as a door prize one time. Those I won’t miss.

But my kids both sorted through their books a while back and put a stack in the give away pile. I sighed and pined as I stroked the cover of each book before putting it in the brown grocery bag. I even skimmed through a couple of them. I miss the days when the kids and I read together. Goodbye Enid Blyton. Goodbye Boxcar Children.

As hard as it was passing on the books, the real wrench came with the toy shopping cart. My husband and I gave it to our daughter for Christmas the year she was three. At the time, I had little faith in its durability. I thought she’d play with it for three or four months and then get tired of it or it would break. I’ve never before or since given anyone a gift that was such a hit. It was the first package opened, and my daughter used it the rest of the day to deliver items to people. After that, the cart often went with us to the grocery store, where my little girl would do her shopping right next to mine. It delivered our “extra mail” sometimes – pieces of scrap paper or real junk mail that I gave her so she could do her postal rounds.

When we moved from our old house to the one where we now live, my daughter was eight. We did a severe pruning of goods at that time, but the shopping cart survived the cut. My son was barely five, and he still played with it sometimes. In fact, my daughter did, too, even though she towered over it by then. After a while, nobody pushed it around anywhere, but it sat in a corner of my daughter’s room, where she used it to store craft supplies.

A couple of years ago, she decluttered her room and finally moved out the shopping cart, telling me she was ready to let go of it. So I placed it in a corner of my and my husband’s bedroom, where it remained for another two years. I kept thinking I couldn’t give it to just anyone. I was waiting for the right child to come along. I wanted to know who got it and perhaps see them play with it. But that never happened.

This morning I stopped kidding myself. Since I was taking several things to Goodwill anyway, I knew I needed to include the cart. My daughter is 17, for goodness sake. It’s time for some other child to discover it and get some joy from it, even if I never know who that child is. I had to dab a tear as I put the shopping cart in the back of my van. I know for the next year or two, I’ll keep my eyes open at the grocery store, hoping to see some little kid pushing a blue and pink cart down the aisles.

Trying to Be Home for the Holidays

Thanksgiving will be here before we know it. Not to panic anyone. My oldest brother and his wife will be coming in from out of state, and we will bring my mom out from the nursing home for part of the day. It should be great. I’m looking forward to it. There’s only one ~~slight~~ major problem: accessibility.

frontsteps — Front entrance to our house.

front porch — A different view of the front entrance

We also have a side door, but once you step inside it, you immediately have to go up stairs to get to the main level. And our parking area is behind the house. What we really need is a back door.

back room — We could use a back door, about here.

And a wheelchair ramp from the there to where we park.

parking — We could use a ramp along here.

So we’re having it done. Dispensing with our usual do-it-yourself mode that can make projects stretch out for months, we’re hiring a contractor my husband knows to put in a back door and build a ramp. He says he can have it done in plenty of time for Thanksgiving.

Putting aside my anxiety dreams about Thanksgiving arriving to find a half-finished project and unusable guest room in a still-inaccessible house because something’s sure to go wrong, we have to pay for this thing. Since the contractor is a friend, we’re getting a good price, but I’ve discovered nobody wants to loan you $4,500. They’ll happily loan us ten times that much, however. It’s crazy.

So we’re refinancing the whole shebang, trading in our old mortgage and rolling the cost of the project into a new one. Man alive, has that meant a lot of form filling out and information tracking down.The good news is how much interest rates have dropped. Our payments will be a lot lower.

The construction materials should arrive Friday, and work begins next week. We’ve talked about making the house accessible since we moved in nine years ago, but it’s never risen to the top of the to-do list until now. I’m happy to know we’ll have an ADA compliant entrance.

Oh, about the back room where the door is going – I mentioned it’s our guest bedroom. My son helped me move out the furniture already. It’s scattered in other places throughout the house. There’s a tight squeeze to get to my home office at the moment, but I can still make it.

In Which I Miss Something Important

In the seven months since my mom arrived in town, it never occurred to me to wonder if I should be receiving Medicare statements. I’ve been getting statements from her supplemental insurance.

Then I received an email from my oldest sister, with whom Mom lived before we brought her here. She’s been receiving the statements. And now they’re changing the prescription drug part of it. She said she’s not sure if the new insurance provider is based on mom’s old Ohio address or her current Missouri one. She’d mail everything to me in one big envelope.

Well. Hm.

The envelope arrived today. I’ll open it tomorrow. I couldn’t face it this afternoon. I thought we’d got her address change registered with Social Security and everyone. Her checks are being deposited to the correct bank account, at least.

So I have a project for next week. It’s always something. But I supposed if it weren’t always something, then it would nothing. And who wants that?