Embracing a case of deliberate amnesia about last year’s Easter egg dying fiasco, I boiled eggs and set up dye cups last night, inviting my teenaged kids to join me. And…it went okay. I would say we had fun, even. They’re both so creative. I love seeing how our traditions take on a new flavor as they become young adults. Once the decorating was done, I looked at the results and dubbed them Geekster Eggs.
For my mom in today’s mail: “We are required to complete an annual review of eligibility. In order to determine continued eligibility, we are asking you to complete all questions on the enclosed form.”
I glance at the form – “Page 1 of 6.” Okay then. I know how I’m spending my evening.
I know they need to make sure everything is up-to-date and accurate. It’s just…sigh. Can’t they simply ask if anything has changed instead of making me filling out everything from scratch? Again?
Welp, better stop typing on my blog and start filling in boxes on the paperwork.
Practicing for our eventual empty nest, Mr. GenBLT and I took our first ever road trip without our kids this past Saturday. So we were only going to a city two hours away, and not staying overnight, and they are now 15 & 18 years old. But still – we left town without them! It felt momentous.
I called my mom to make sure everything was okay with her, threw a few dollars in the direction my children, and then split town, baby. On a date. The mister works loooong hours, and I, of course, have my day job plus the kids and my mom and the house…so we don’t get out much.
The occasion was a Kansas City Royals game. My hometown team. Neither of my children shares my enthusiasm for baseball. They opted to stay behind and go to a movie together instead.
I had a wonderful day. The Royals won in an exciting 4-3 finish, scoring the winning run in the 8th inning. We were additionally entertained by the guy behind us with a Walter Winchell voice, who kept a running commentary going, but was often trying to play catch-up on what happened while he was talking about the previous play. The hubster and I stopped on the way home to have dinner together. Just the two of us, at a restaurant, trying to recall the last time this happened.
My mom’s okay. My kids are okay, and even managed to feed themselves, plus the pets. The house is still standing. No disaster happened due to our adventure. We might have to try something like this again, in another 6 months to a year.
Today I am 50 years old. I took the day off work and had lunch with my mom. One of her dining companions told me “Some day you’ll realize how young 50 is.” I think I realize it now. I don’t feel old. At all.
However, an interesting thing happened a while back that gave me a hint that I might have lived a while. I picked up a copy of Anna Quindlen’s “A Short Guide to a Happy Life” hoping to glean some gems of wisdom. As I thumbed through the pages, I found myself thinking, “But I already know this.” Oh! Epiphany time! Maybe I’m now an elder who can dispense wisdom as well as receiving it. Like Anna Quindlen.
This possibly being the case, here are a few things I’ve learned through the years:
1. You can never really know what anyone else is thinking. You can only know what they’re saying and doing. Two different people can do the exact same thing for two completely different reasons. Sometimes you might make a good guess and the evidence might support that guess, but you’ll never know for sure. I’ve found my life usually goes better when I give the benefit of the doubt, if at all possible.
2. I’ve had the privilege of spending time with a variety of people from different backgrounds, of different races, religious beliefs, political opinions, abilities and economic levels. I’ve been in groups of atheists and groups of fundamentalist Christians. I’ve known Buddhists and Muslims. I’ve conversed with folks who are wealthy and folks who are homeless; I’ve discussed politics with liberals, libertarians and conservatives. And one thing holds true. No matter the beliefs or circumstances of a group of people, if you get a big enough crowd together, you’ll end up with the same basic mix of personalities. Some will be loud, some quiet, some arrogant, some humble, some considerate, some inconsiderate, some driven, some more relaxed, some selfish, some giving. People are people are people.
3. Others will come and go in my life, but I’m guaranteed to have to live with myself every minute of every day until I die. So I need to be a person I can live with. In the long-term, I rest easier when I listen to my conscience more than I listen to popular opinion.
4. Hand-in-hand with #3 – the biggest regrets in my life, the most painful memories, are not the ones in which someone hurt me, but the ones in which I acted badly and hurt someone else. Those are the memories that haunt me.
5. Forgiveness is a necessary building block of society. We all need it at one time or another. If there is no forgiveness, there is no reason to try to do better next time.
6. No matter what you do, somebody won’t like it. Make your peace with this.
7. Nobody escapes pain. Bad things will happen to you. But what happens to you and who you are – those are two different things.
8. Worrying has never helped me through any situation so far. If things went south, obviously the worrying didn’t correct the problem. If things turned out okay, I was worried for nothing.
9. Stopping a moment to breathe has helped me through numerous situations.
10. This is a very personal lesson. I am old enough now that a realization is finally sinking in – I’m never going to fix everything about myself. There’s one specific area I’ve worked on a lot. I have social anxiety and am resultantly socially awkward. I’ve made great strides over the years, but I know now I’m never going to cure myself. It will always be a condition to be managed; never one from which I’ve recovered. The good news is I’ve also decided it’s okay to have this imperfection. I no longer berate myself about it. After all, Ted Bundy reportedly possessed excellent social skills and look what he did with them.
11. Taking care of your teeth is more important than I can possibly say.
12. 50 isn’t too old to feel crushing disappointment when a package arrives at your house on your birthday and it’s not for you.
13. You really can learn something new every day, no matter how long you live.
14. The universe is an amazing place.
If I think of more, I’ll write an addendum.
My mom made it another year. Last weekend we celebrated her 89th birthday. Going out is too hard for Mom any more. But we had a good celebration anyway. One of my nephews made it into town (the one she likes to mention to people as “my grandson, the eye doctor”) and my 18-year-old baked a truly delish chocolate cake. 
And I found the perfect birthday gift. My mom worked as a welder during World War II. So for the shelf in her room, what could be more appropriate than this? 
Yep, I bought my mom a superhero action figure for her 89th birthday. She loved it.
My youngest child is 15. Five years ago today, I volunteered at my last grade school class party. I remember the day with great fondness, recalling the dance of joy I did in the parking lot afterward as I said to myself, “I never have to do that ever again in my entire life!”
The way my kids’ grade school did parties was to have each class rotate through various rooms – the Crafts Room, the Snack Room, the Game Room. My first class party I eagerly asked what I should do and was assigned to the Crafts Room, where I was handed some colored paper and glue sticks, along with an instruction sheet containing unfathomable diagrams. Thirty seconds later I had kindergarteners lined up, waiting for me to show them how to make their whatever it was supposed to be. I’m not a crafty person and I work a lot better with linguistic instruction than pictures. The other parents in the room were breezing through their lines of kids, while I sat and wondered which way the paper was supposed to fold.
I learned a valuable lesson that day. Show up early and grab a spot in the Snack Room dipping ice cream, before someone else takes the position. The number of kids still seems overwhelming, but once you’ve filled them with sugar, you get to send them out of the room to go be someone else’s hyperactive problem.
Valentine’s Day always featured the added bonus of showing up with a case of PTSD from having assembled and addressed three dozen valentines the night before with a kid who insisted they fervently wanted to give out valentines, yet couldn’t seem to get through the task of even signing them. The first couple of years I insisted I wasn’t doing the work for their valentines. This progressed to, “Okay, I’ll make and address half and you address half, but you have to sign them all.” The final year I gave up all pretense. I bought a package of Iron Man perforated cards and forged my son’s name on them. It was easier and less stressful that way.
There are things I miss about having younger kids. I miss going to the park. I miss bedtime reading and snuggles on the couch. But there are compensations, with no more class parties being one of the biggies.
While my mom is still around, I want to take this opportunity to say, publicly, that she was right about so many things. Not that we see eye-to-eye on everything. But I’ve come around on a lot of issues since I was a kid.
I can rarely convince my son to wear a coat, even on the coldest winter days. I comfort myself by noticing how few kids exiting his high school in the afternoon are bundled up. If I’m a bad mom, at least I have lots of company. I remember how I never wanted to wear a winter hat in my younger days, no matter how many maternal admonishments I received about frost-bitten ears. I wouldn’t believe my mom was right about how important it was to cover your head in order to stay warm, because nobody else my age was doing it. In a concrete sense, I really was too cool.
Somewhere in the years of my adult life I stopped caring whether other people were wearing hats or not. I wanted to be warm. Since I have a lot of hair, I often go for a scarf wrapped around my head in lieu of hat, but I do cover my head with something when the temperature dips below freezing. Mom, you were right. It makes a huge difference.
And, Mom, the thing where you always cleaned the top of a can before opening it? Totally the right thing to do. I used to think this was a silly obsession springing from your clean freak nature. Besides, it added needless seconds onto the food prep time. Then I became a mother, myself. After enough experience cleaning up someone else’s puke, I couldn’t help thinking a little harder about food safety and cleanliness. Once I took the time to make a close observation of the workings of the can opener, I realized how easily the device could push anything from the top of the can into the food. I’ll never reach anywhere near my mom’s level of tidiness, but on this one issue, yeah, she’s probably right. Definitely right. It only takes a couple of seconds after all, to wipe the top of a can. And then I can serve my family tomato sauce with confidence.
Also, my things do last longer when I take care of them. Who would have thought it? Oh yeah – you, Mom.
It’s Christmas afternoon and I’m still in my pajamas. On the couch. Coughing up a lung. This holiday isn’t going as planned. But then I’ve always heard the way to make the Universe laugh is to make a plan. It must be chuckling up a storm. I’m trying to laugh along and make the best of it. For instance, right after typing that sentence I added to the gaiety by accidentally dumping out the contents of a nearly-full economy-sized bag of cough drops. Ha ha ha!
After my mother spent several hours at our house on Thanksgiving, it became obvious she can no longer handle so much disruption in her day. Her back problems flared worse than ever and she was exhausted. It took her days to recover. I had a little moment when my husband, kids and I were decorating our Christmas tree, our ornaments including a few vintage ones that survived my childhood. I experienced a wave of sadness knowing my mom will never decorate a tree with me again. She’ll likely never come to our house again. I also had a few seconds of irritability over the fact that humanity hasn’t developed teleportation technology yet, because it would solve this problem. She could beam in for a few minutes and then beam back to the nursing home. I settled for taking a photo of the tree to show her.
I asked Mom if she thought she could handle a short outing to a restaurant. She believes she can, so our plan was to pick her up on Christmas Eve and go to IHOP, her favorite. For today, I thought I’d make a lasagna and some sides to have at home and at some time during the day pop over to visit Mom again. But over the weekend I developed a tickle in my throat, the same tickle reported by some of my local acquaintances before they fell all-out sick. Yep, I caught the thing that’s going around. Also, over the weekend, one of my molars broke and I managed to acquire a second-degree burn on my arm while removing a dish from the oven. At some point, my life started to resemble a sit-com plot. However, if I’ve learned anything from my mother, it’s to make the best of the situation, whatever it is.
Though I’m sad not to be with my mom on Christmas, I’m reminded once again how blessed I am with family, both immediate and extended. My husband and my 15-year-old son went over yesterday to see my mom (the 18-year-old caught what I have, so stayed home) and take her gift plus the staff gift bag I put together.
Let me go off the rails here, and recommend this idea for nurses, aides and housekeeping staff at skilled nursing facilities. Since there are so many of them, I put together a bag of items for the break room: hot cocoa mix, including regular and sugar-free, a variety of teas, popcorn, mixed nuts, snack crackers, etc. It’s easy and covers everyone.
Back to family now – my two guys had a good visit with my mom. Plus I put out the word to far-flung relatives that I couldn’t see her on Christmas, so she might appreciate some phone calls. When I called her about an hour ago, she was thrilled to report her phone had been ringing all yesterday and today. This cheers me up.
Also, my spouse and kids make the holiday fun. We’re a geeky crew who all like a good joke. After my two teens went on errands without me the other day, a package appeared under our tree with a gift tag saying it was to the whole family, and from:
The kids come by this creative packaging honestly. Here’s what my husband gave me this year:
It’s hard not to have fun when the people around you are putting so much effort into making the event enjoyable.
Our three cats have helped, too, taking turns sitting on my lap.
Then there’s the Pandora Christmas station for holiday cheer, and Netflix to give me a chance to watch some of those movies I’ve been meaning to watch over the years. I finally saw “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. Not much of a story, after all, but the singing and dancing is wonderful. I tried watching “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” and now take comfort in the knowledge I haven’t been missing much. After 15 minutes, I switched to “Men in Black.” Much more entertaining. I’ll have to dial up the sequels.
While I languish on the couch, my family members have been foraging in lieu of a Christmas dinner appearing for them. Macaroni and cheese has been cooked, and we’ve wiped out the back stock of canned soup. Meanwhile, IHOP awaits for the day when we’re all well again. And I still have the ingredients for lasagna.
I’ve been floundering lately, feeling overwhelmed and undercompetent a lot. I’m glad for the Thanksgiving holiday to help me escape the funk. What a great idea – a holiday about gratitude. I do have so much to celebrate.
So many people say I’m grateful for my family, and I truly am. But that seems so general. For the ones I see all the time, there are specific things I appreciate about each of them.
My mom: First, I’m thankful she’s here to celebrate another holiday with us. We have our differences of opinion, but I’m happy I learned from her the value of doing your best to figure out what’s right and do it. You don’t really see your parents in context until you’re grown and you find out how differently some other people were raised.
There were things I didn’t know to be thankful for when I was growing up, but I do now. My mom never criticized my appearance. She had her ideas about appropriate clothing as far as modesty and I have different standards now, but beyond that, she never said a bad word about my weight, my hair, my complexion, any of it. I took this for granted, not knowing at the time how many girls were developing terrible self-images based on their parents’ critical remarks. Sure, I got plenty of it from society at large, but not getting it from my mom helped me not internalize it. In fact, my mom has never criticized anyone based on looks, or even commented on looks much at all, except for the occasional compliment on a new hairstyle or saying “That color looks good on you.” I’m thankful I was taught by example not to judge someone on appearances.
My husband: I recently read an article about a study of cities in the U.S. that said our little city is one of the hardest-working. My immediate response was “That’s because my husband lives here. He skews the results.” He’s always been willing to work however many hours it takes to get a job done, and is currently doing freelance projects on the side in addition to his day job.
My firstborn (18 years old now): I appreciate her enthusiasm. When she enjoys something – a book, movie, tv show, pet, food – she enjoys it thoroughly and without embarrassment. And she loves to see others enjoying things in equal measure, even if it’s not the same things. She embraces diversity of tastes. And she finds fun ways to share the excitement over her interests. The other day, when I got out of the shower, the mirror was all steamed up. There in the condensation clearly appeared the words “Welcome to Night Vale.” I have one suspect. One. I’m going to miss these little happenings when she eventually moves out.
My younger child (now 15): He has incredible focus and stamina when he’s working on a project. His two big interests are music and computer programming. In either area, he can work for hours on end. There may be an attention span deficit in his generation, but he doesn’t contribute. And then I get new music in my life. So what’s not to like.
I’m leaving now to pick up my mom and bring her to our house for the day. Happy Thanksgiving!
“Walking is man’s best medicine.” – Hippocrates.
And woman’s, I would add. I’m lucky to live in a good walking neighborhood. One of my favorite spots is a park a few blocks away. It has no playground equipment. But it has a stream running through the middle, some open grassy areas, lots of trees and a couple of mysteries.
What are those things coming up out of the ground? I keep walking past them and wondering. They’re made of tree-like material. My best guess is that they’re part of the surrounding trees’ root systems. Some day I might do some research and find more information. But for now, I want to keep my walks to their intended purposes – get some exercise and get outside my head. Shutting down my overactive mind, giving it a rest, is one of the biggest benefits of my regular constitutionals. At this point, I prefer to enjoy the unusualness of the sight without having to know everything about it.
Nothing clears my head more effectively than a good walk outdoors. It’s always been my go-to. When my kids were little, I had a fancy schmancy two-seater wagon with cup holders. I’d often load them in with sippy cups and snacks and pull them around the neighborhood. And the day generally went better afterward.
Now that they’re young adults, I walk alone most of the time. I’m an introvert so this works for me. It’s my time not to have to think about my mom’s Medicaid paperwork, or whether my son is caught up on his homework, or getting the leaking shower fixed. All of those things will be waiting for me when I come back. And I’ll be less likely to snap at anyone over them.
Walking – free, easy, requires no special equipment, and it makes me feel good. Hippocrates couldn’t have been more right.
Gen BLT 