Barnmaven

Fear, Stasis, Transformation

My phobias:  Pooping in public bathrooms, spiders, drowning, tornados and confrontation.

Spiders, because of obvious reasons.  Drowning thanks to my brother and his tendency to hold my head under water whenever we were in a pool together.  Tornados?  I think that comes from the Wizard of Oz, because I've never actually been in a tornado.  They terrify me, though.

The pooping?  A delightful tale of two older girls bullying a first grader in the school bathroom when there were no adults or other students present.  Having two girls stand on the toilets on either side of your stall and mock you while you perform a perfectly normal human function apparently puts a mental lock on the sphincter.  For years.

Confrontation.  That might surprise some people.  In my comfort zone, not much of an issue.   Competition is part of my nature.  On the basketball court, any kind of game or contest,  no problem.  I'll go toe to toe with you.  With strangers, often not a problem.  With people I really care about or spend a great deal of time with, though, I've spent years choking on my fear whenever I've had to deal with others in a confrontational way.  I've gotten amazingly creative at hiding how absolutely horrifying it is for me to deliver bad news or confront someone's behavior.  

This is not in any way a poke at my parents, because like most parents, they had the tools they had and they did the best they could with them.  I can't fault them because I tend to use the same parenting toolbox.  The downside of this is that I had to learn as an adult how to find the language to explain my boundaries.  "You have to stop doing that because I said so" is really not the most useful way to confront a problem. 

Developing a lexicon to communicate about uncomfortable things is hard work, but I find it is also important work.  SG and I are a normal couple, which means we fight, we have bad days, we get cranky with one another.  Sometimes things get blown out of proportion.  Like everyone else, we either have to find ways to wind back down or we jeopardize the survival of our relationship.    In the same vein, learning this lexicon helps me to communicate better with my children and my family, my friends, people I work with.

Sometimes you have to find a way to express feelings, and I'm just as uncomfortable with that as anyone.  What I used to be really bad at was identifying the real what behind my emotions and learning to deal with the what instead of transferring or projecting.  I also have to remember in a conflict that the other person may also be engaging in transference or projection.  I might not know why, and instead of throwing gasoline on the fire by being angry, pointing fingers or placing blame, it may be more productive and compassionate to ask some questions, to seek understanding.  That doesn't mean I have to accept or condone certain behaviors, but I find it serves the relationship I have with another person for me to spend some time working on untangling that knot.

There are other times where you have to transcend feelings and cope with things on a more practical level, times when you need to let yourself and the other people involved be responsible for taking care of their own feelings and attending to the current issue with maturity and poise.  Its easy to say, harder in practice.  My children, who are not yet practiced in managing their emotional responses, are a perfect example of how feelings get in the way of progress.  The moment things go in a way they did not anticipate or expect, their emotions rise and so does their volume.  This of course is counterproductive toward achieving whatever end they had in mind, but they already lost sight of that the minute those emotions took hold.  They haven't yet developed the ability to delay reacting to an emotion in order to give themselves time to understand what is happening and how they might best react.

I meet plenty of adults who have the same problem, which I would guess is a result of never having had the honor of being around someone who was able to provide a better model of behavior, or perhaps they have not yet reached the point of being comfortable enough with self-examination to identify how and why this might be a problem.

What is interesting is the more I am able to witness other people modeling good confrontation skills the more I am able to find ways to practice those skills and have more positive outcomes.  As a result, though I still have old habits that it would serve me well to discard, I'm no longer afraid of confrontation.  I find I look forward to the opportunity to solve problems and seek resolution because I'm better at both listening and expressing myself.   No wonder -- just as it is often not much fun to have to do things you're not very good at, the opposite is true as well.

We all have different paths to walk; my path led me to the writings of David Richo, Wayne Dyer and other wise folks whose writings and lectures engaged my interest and had me wanting to learn more.  I've been privileged as well to encounter some very mature people who possess terrific conflict management skills.  Those individuals have provided me with many opportunities to learn in real-time by observing their ability to navigate situations that might have gone terribly wrong otherwise.  I've learned from my husband, who when he isn't being silly or stubborn or just a pain in my ass is remarkably compassionate and dedicated to trying to understand me and to nurturing the positive in our relationship.

If I could only apply the same principles to spiders and tornadoes.  

Not bloody likely.

 

 

 

 

Doing it for myself

Photo by Mary H Peret, 2013.  Coyote sets a good example for people who need to learn to depend on themselves.

Owning your feelings, actions and results can be so challenging at times.  Before I began to learn about how to be self-dependent and not co-dependent, I would find myself mired in thoughts of how things would be better if only other people would do something.  I thought healing was something other people did for you, that if I simply received enough bolstering at the hands of caring others that I would be OK.  Clinging to that expectation was actually one of the things that prevented me from really healing at all.

Its not that love and compassion don't help.  When I'm having a hard time it feels good to know that other people are thinking of me with love and concern.  Its uplifting to have a friend or loved one reach out.  Other people can be so helpful, but ultimately I'm the only one who can do what's necessary to heal and grow.

I think I will always be learning this process of sitting with my feelings and letting them happen instead of trying to avoid them by any means possible.  Feelings can be huge and scary and sometimes they feel like they're going to swallow me whole.  That's when it seems easiest and best to just avoid them altogether.  Distraction can wear a thousand faces -- a drink, a movie, exercise, getting together with other people to talk about things NOT related to feeling bad.  The list is long.  Distraction isn't always bad -- sometimes you need a chance to back off from that big dark emotional weight and let a little light into the room.  Eventually, though, if you are going to truly get to a place where that feeling no longer controls you, you're going to need to sit down and get cozy with it.  Let it happen.  

Once I was able to start letting feelings happen I found I was also able to start letting circumstances happen, and then...my whole life changed.

But it started with the kernel of an understanding: No one else can fix me.  It isn't their job. 

Believing that, I then began to understand that I also was not able to fix anyone else either.

I wanted to keep doing that, and so I argued with myself that not fixing other people meant I didn't love them or that I didn't have compassion for them.  So I had to struggle for a while to learn that in truth, having compassion for other people meant caring for them while they dealt with their own struggles, not trying to solve their circumstances for them.  Which is more loving?  Assuming another person is incapable of handling their own problems, or loving them enough to give them the freedom to find their own truths?  

I often wonder what my turning point was, when it was that the scales fell from my eyes and I realized that my struggles were my own responsibility.  I remember the very first time I was talking to someone who was having a crisis and when they told me of their pain, for the first time instead of offering myself as a resource, I simply said "I'm so sorry this is happening to you" and left it at that.  I resisted the urge to do or say more, and let them continue to talk to me about how they were feeling, continued to listen and offer empathy and made no offer of solutions.  After I hung up the phone I had to sit quietly for a little while.  It was a big change for me, and it felt simultaneously amazing and awkward.  I experienced some humility, because it finally occurred to me that I was NOT such an amazing person that I was the answer to people's problems.  I realized that when I acted in that way what I was really doing was trying to be important.  That stung, a little.  OK, maybe a lot.  It was a big first step, swallowing the fact that I was not the good person I imagined myself to be.

That was the rock that fell down the face of the slope that started the landslide, that started my journey.

Today, in my life right now, I have lots of emotions that I'm dealing with.  Anxiety, fear, loneliness are there.  But they are intermingled with joy and love and contentedness.  I can't avoid being lonely, but I can talk to that feeling, invite it in for a sit-down.  I can acknowledge it, touch the pain it brings, let it move through me.  It is a wave - it comes, it peaks, it passes.  Fighting the waves makes the swimmer tired, makes her gasp for her breath, drains all of her energy.  When she lets go and allows herself to float on top of the wave she is no longer in danger of drowning.

A lot of lovely friends and family have expressed concerns over how long SG will be gone on this job.  I hear them, and I cannot be dishonest and claim this will be easy.  But I know who my husband thinks I am, and that is the woman I want to be.  The woman he sees when he looks at me knows how to take care of herself both physically and emotionally.  The only reason (other than money) that he could feel OK taking a job out of state for such a long period of time is because he believes not just in himself but in me.  He's not immune to my feelings nor am I to his.  But he loves a woman he sees as strong and self-reliant.  I need to let that fact sink in and remember it during the times when I'm challenged by my loneliness and fear.   He can't fix it for me whether he's here or not -- I can only fix it for myself, believing that I have everything I need within me.  

And I do.

 

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Extremes and the going to of them

The perfect relationship.  The perfect mate.  The perfect marriage.

SG and I on our wedding day, Nov 2011

 Do these things exist?  Perhaps they are merely chimeras that distract us from the more distressing realities of adult relationships.  When people are ready to discard the fairy tale and acknowledge that relationships are messy and hard and not as constantly satisfying as the diamond sellers' commercials would have us believe, they are faced with the daunting task of sifting through their relationships past and present.  Eventually you have to pick a place to stand, and if the fairytale is the only genre you wish to attach to your relationship, likely you will end up standing alone.  

This is not my "perfect relationship."  In my perfect relationship, my partner and I get to be both together and apart in relatively equal portions.  We nearly always have the opportunity to express our affection in ways that feel good - hugs and kisses, holding hands, a neckrub at the end of a hard day.  When we're apart it is only for long enough to remind us to appreciate each other's presence.  

I find myself continually needing to relearn the lesson of letting go of "perfect" and being happy with what I have.  Some days it is easier than others.  On this Valentine's Day it is particularly challenging.

I find the most difficult part of being married to someone who works for long periods on the road is getting used to being a ping pong ball flying between paddles labeled ALL and NOTHING.  When he's home, he's home 24/7.  When he leaves, I'm on my own.  

When he's home, he wants to help with everything.  I don't know if that's just that he is a person who gains pleasure from doing all that he can for the people he loves or if he's assuaging some level of guilt over not having been able to be physically present, but my husband doesn't want me to have to do much when he's around.  Like every couple we each have our preferences for the kind of chores we prefer to be stuck with, but even if there are few tasks I usually end up doing, he carries the bulk of it.  Meals, laundry, dishes, dogs, getting kids out the door to school.  I had to beg him to stop feeding my horses so that I would be able to have a chance to see them every evening.  In the mornings all I'm responsible for is getting myself out the door.  I come home in the evening and if he hasn't already got dinner on the table he suggests we order something; never does he expect me to come home from work and cook.  He picks up things he knows I like at the grocery store.  I'm spoiled rotten and I know it. 

When SG is gone, I build my own routine.  My days, while lonely, have a comforting rythym.  I am much more disciplined with my time when I am the only one home to tend to things - dishes and laundry get done, things get picked up, meals get made and animals get fed.  There isn't much wiggle room for lollygagging in the morning, so I quickly learn to be efficient and not play so many games on my phone while I'm eating breakfast.  The kids and I turn into a cozy little team.  I involve them in the decision making a little more, we have more one on one time.  I try to find things to depend upon them for so that they learn to be dependable.  I remember to appreciate not only how spoiled I am by my husband but to be appreciative of my independence and ability to take care of things on my own.

Usually it feels like I've no sooner gotten into the swing of my routine when my husband returns.  It is a period of adjustment for both of us -he's been on the road with only his own needs to tend to.  We've both gotten used to having time to ourselves.  Its really hard for me, I think harder because at least SG gets a break from people while I'm at work.  I, on the other hand, spend almost no time alone in my own home.  Between mid-December and yesterday the longest I was alone in my house was one Sunday when SG went to church and I didn't want to go.  

But when he's gone, the loneliness can get unbearably difficult.  There is an ocean of difference between being alone by choice and being alone because you can't be with the people you love.  When the kids are also gone, the first few hours feel like heaven and the rest of the time feels like punishment. 

No, this is not easy.  

But -

I'm not alone because my husband doesn't want to be with me.  He's just as lonely as I am when he goes on the road, at least once he gets beyond those first heady days of enjoying his solitude.  He misses those hugs and date nights just as much as I.  If it were up to me I might not have picked a career on the road for my husband, but isn't my choice to make.   I might be happier if he were here, but when he had a less-than-satisfying job that kept him home, he was really miserable.  I'd far rather have a partner who feels good about his work and his contribution to our family than one who is miserable and angry and feeling trapped.  

I know there are people right now who would be thrilled to have a two-income household even it meant their partner had to be somewhere else for a little while.   So I'll take my first-world problems and I'll remind myself to continue to find positives so that maybe the bad days won't roll around so often.

However --

Valentine's Day can seriously kiss my first-world ass this year.

Into the Deafening Silence

I don't know what to write here anymore.

I lost my mojo.  I lost my will.  I have things to say, but fear this is not the place.  I have truths to share but I cannot share them without hurting other people, so I hold them inside.  I have learned things about love, life, work, relationships, things I want to share but risk exposing myself and others in uncomfortable ways.  I have stories about my kids but realize as they grow older that their stories are not mine to tell.  I  I am not ready to give this space up, yet, and so I will work on finding the right words with which to fill it.

Today:

I am on a journey in a landscape I could never have dreamed of as a child - as a parent, as a professional, as a partner and as a human being.  I'm living in a balance between extremes -  I feel I've accomplished everything and nothing all at the same time.  I'm stuck in the churn of the waves washing up on the shore, tumbling about and never sure which way leads to the sky and air and which way leads to the rocks.  

One of the most interesting things I've learned lately is that I'm happy.  I really am happy.  I'm also unbearably sad.  And strangely I can feel both of those things at the same time, comfortably.  Somewhere along the way I must have improved my coping skills.

I'm happy because I am loved and I am surrounded by people I love.  I'm happy in my lifes' circumstances, with my family and my friends, my horses and my farm, my job, my faith and my lifestyle.  I'm blessed richly and I know that I had better enjoy all of the goodness this life contains because it could change on the flip of a coin.  

I'm sad because life is so often sad, because people I care about have problems I can't fix, because like everyone I've suffered losses and miss those loved ones so, because sometimes my own circumstances can be as challenging as they are beautiful. For instance:  SG will leave sometime in the next ten days and won't return until the end of the year.  Right now it feels a little overwhelming, but I know that this is not a bad thing, its just a thing.  For SG its a wonderful thing because he will be working and making money and that makes him feel good and safe, feel like he is providing for us.  For me it means a little more heavy lifting but I have good support and I'll be OK.  We'll both be lonely; it won't kill us.  He will most likely be able to come home for a couple of long weekends and I suppose I'll be spending some of my vacation days to go catch a gander at the east end of Nebraska.  

It makes me both happy and sad - happy for my husband because he is happy.  Sad for being alone when I have such a great husband and friend to share time with.  Happy to have time to myself to do things that only I enjoy the doing of.  Sad to think of weekends, special days, family moments without an important part of our little family with us.  Happy to know I have a great relationship that can withstand long separations.  Sad to know I have a great relationship in which long separations are part of the deal.

This is my life today.  

Thanks, God, for this wonderful life.

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I was talking with a friend about how you know you've met the right person.

She related a conversation she'd had with a potential new love interest.  She'd asked a pointed sex-related question and had just loved his response.  "It was the absolute perfect answer!"

I think back to when SG and I were dating.  There were a ton of those moments, and there still are.  When you're having a conversation and questions come up - big questions, small questions, silly questions, serious - the answer given can either remind you why this person is the yin to your yang or give you pause about whether you were possibly drunk when you decided to commit.

The interesting thing about it, at least to me, is that where those answers come from tell you as much about your relationship as the answers themselves.

The perfect answer when its spontaneous and unfiltered is a heady thing.  Its confirmation that you are compatible.  You mesh in ways that make communication easy because in some important areas you believe in the same things.  Those answers are the answers that tell you your partner will be reliable in an emergency, that he'll pick the right things to take out of a burning house, that when faced with a deadline and a choice of Valentine's Day presents he'll bring home the one you'll like best.

But there's an even better perfect answer.  

The best perfect answer is the one that comes from a place of having gotten to know each other deeply.  Its the answer that you will get from someone who understands you, cares about you, respects you.  Its the answer that isn't off the cuff, the one where he pauses for a moment and carefully considers his words, then delivers a remark or phrase that lets you know he understands what is important to you.  Maybe he's pulling verbal punches or maybe he's stretching an unimportant truth to please you.  Maybe he's backing away from an emotionl reaction in order to meet you in a better place.  I'm not sure it matters why so much as it matters that it happens.

There are times when I don't get the perfect answer.  Sometimes the answer is good enough, sometimes its something I choose to ignore, because you know what in any relationship you aren't likely to be in harmony all of the time.  Sometimes its an answer that stings a little bit and you respond in kind.  But in the whole, when the perfect answer is there more than its not, when love and care for you shine in the words he speaks and the look in his eyes as he speaks them, you'll know.  This is the one.

Never forget, though - perfect answers work both ways.  Be as generous in giving them as you are grateful to receive them.  Your perfect match deserves to hear them.

Saturday briefly.

Conversation at about 3 am this morning:

Me:  SG, how long have we been together? 

SG:  Mumble mumble something mumble

Me:  About three years?

SG:  Um.  Yeah.  (Snores)

Me:  Can you tell me why after three years of being together you have suddenly in the last six weeks lost the ability to put the toilet seat down when you're done?

SG: (Laughs) (Snores)

Me:  Is this some sort of passive aggressive thing?  'Cause if I get a wet ass in the middle of the night I'm not going to be PASSIVE aggressive about it.

 

 

 

Relationship math

 

I love to read relationship books.  Whenever I read something that reminds me of my relationship with SG I marvel at how intuitive, how clever, how well researched the author must be.  When I read something that doesn't fit us at all, naturally either the author is a charlatan or we are the exception to the rule.  My husband is more than a standard deviation from the mean, if you know what I mean. 

Anyhow, this current book I'm reading is all about how Attachment Theory is really what comes into play in our love relationships, that our primary relationship with our partner follows many of the same patterns as child/parent attachment.  Similar to the way a healthy parental attachment fosters a sense of security and the ability to be happily independent in a child, a healthy attachment in an adult relationship makes each partner feel safer about indpendence - both theirs and their partner's.  According to this theory, then, a clingy, jealous or insecure partner isn't just being a jerk:  they're dealing with abandonment issues. 

Makes sense.  It helps me see my distaste for SG's road job in a different light; a person whose standard motto regarding relationships goes something like, "Everyone leaves.  Period." isn't likely to feel too secure about having their partner off living the single life for a couple of months at a time. 

Time and love do much to cure the places we are broken, and SG and I have seen a lot of that happening over the course of our relationship.  I'd love to say that I'm completely without insecurity, but I would be lying.  I am, however, much more secure in this relationship than I can recall being in a very long time.  

Which is good, because we're pretty sure he's going to end up going back on the road.

Its not that his in-town full-time job is a horrible job, or anything.  But its not what he's used to.  Its not what he likes or wants to do.  He likes the road.  He likes his solitude.  It doesn't mean he likes being away from me or that he doesn't want to be with me.  But its work and pay that agree with him, and if being alone for several weeks at a time are the price, its one he's happy to pay.  Not everyone has the luxury of choosing what they do for a living.  Hell, at best we choose between several imperfect options and pick the one that's simply the least worst. 

We've had some very long and occasionally very intense discussions about this of late.  We've spent time exploring our feelings about our relationship, about ourselves, about what we want out of our lives and where we want to be ten or twenty years down the road.  We've talked about what's hard about him being gone for me -- being lonely very much the primary issue, followed by being overwhelmed -- and about what's hard for him about about the current situation. 

Compromises in relationships don't mean each party gets what they want and then they hold hands and skip down the primrose path while rose blossoms fall from the sky and birds sing love songs.  Oh, no.  Compromise means sometimes I have to give up more than I think I want to and other times the short stick gets drawn by my husband.  Compromise means maybe my husband goes on the road, but at the same time we get someone to come help with the housework and the yard so that I at least get a break to do things that I want to while he's gone.  Compromise means maybe he doesn't take the six month job that would bring a much bigger payout, but takes fall and spring work and spends the winter at home.   And lets be honest, the days he's here and I get to go gallivanting off on my horse while he stays home and wrangles my offspring there is absolutely no doubt about who is getting the short stick.

So little in life is absolutely perfect.  I would say, if pressed, that SG is the perfect man for me.  I think he would probably say I'm the perfect woman for him.  I know there are times both of us will tell you how the other is driving us insane or irritating the crap out of us, but even then there are billion reasons its worth it to get to the other side of the trying days.

Remind me I wrote this come fall, will you?

The first week always sucks

Remember weeks ago when I said SG had a job offer here in our area? The start date finally materialized.  He had to wait until the holidays were over for the HR people, who are located in another state, to get their stuff together and get him scheduled for his background check, a DMV report and a physical.  The DMV apparently is slower than the social security office because after a whole month they decided to just get him started with the DMV report as a contingency.  (They also made him get a spinal x-ray - but no drug screen.  Weirdest hiring protocol I've EVER heard of.)

So he passes all his screens, gets his offer, quibbles over it for a few days, then accepts.  He finally started on Monday of this week.

While the weeks at a time of wrangling life at home on my own was a serious challenge, the upside was is that SG was also home for weeks at a time.  Home to get the kids dressed and fed and on the bus, the animals fed, dinner made, groceries shopped for and household chores done.  If a child ended up needing to be picked up at school due to illness or behavior, he was there to take care of it.  I got used to coming home to dinner on the stove and kids with finished homework every day. 

I was spoiled.  I had a househusband.

About Thursday of last week panic set in.  We had considered that this would mean drastic changes to our routines at home, but until it was staring us in the face we hadn't really thought it out in detail.  Kids going to before- and after-school care would be kids who needed to get out of bed and ready to go an hour and a half earlier than they were used to.  Dinners, especially when we wanted to create time at the end of our day to exercise, would need to be planned and cooked in advance.  Bedtime would need to be pushed up, undoubtedly spawning cries of outrage.  We'd need to plan around guitar lessons, obedience classes, homework and workouts. 

We laid out plans for meals, we bought groceries.  We identified who was responsible for what each morning and each evening.  We were the parenting equivalent of Rocky training for a fight against the seemingly unbeatable Ivan Drogo.

(What was that line of Dolph Lundgren's from Rocky IV?  "If he dies...he dies."  Yikes.)

Sunday night, groceries are bought and stowed.  Dinner has been eaten and put away and the kids have showered and are enjoying computer time before getting ready for bed.  I pull all the meat out of the fridge we will need for the meal plan I've written up for the next few days.

"Honey, there's only one package of chicken in the freezer.  Didn't you buy any?"

"No, I thought we didn't need chicken.  Do we?"

"I don't think four legs are gonna cut it."

Swap Tuesday for Wednesday on the menu plan and forge ahead.  Its only a minor setback, we're still on our feet and swinging.

So far we've dealt with:

• SG forgetting to set out all of his daily supplements and leaving the house about twenty minutes later than he planned and THEN forgetting his phone on top of it, causing him to have to go back to the house after dropping the kids at daycare
• Me forgetting to fill out Race Car Man's medication log resulting in a phone call in the middle of a meeting after I'd forgotten to silence my phone
• SG spending an hour on another day looking for his desk key, which just happened to be in his desk at work.  In the keyhole of his desk at work.
• Guitar lessons being missed
• I forgot to buy the M&M's for Race Car Man's class party
• Wednesday dinner being changed at the last minute from homemade Ginger Glazed Chicken to McDonald's.
• At least three separate instances of me dramatically announcing "I SWEAR I'm going to CUT MY HAIR OFF!"

On top of all of it, the Chihuahua has had diarrhea for three days which has added an extra half hour to each morning of changing crate bedding, cleaning the carpets with my steam cleaner, extra loads of laundry and lots of air freshener.  Because we were out of clean bedding last night we had to let the dogs sleep loose in our room.  Did I mention Zoey's favorite place to sleep is the bed?  Between her insistence on putting her big head so close to my face I couldn't breathe and SG's habit of hogging the covers I finally ended up retreating in a huff to the couch where Iwas then assailed by the cats trying to take advantage of available human real estate to curl up on.

Its only Thursday and I'm starting to feel afraid we're headed for a TKO.  Not to mention its Valentine's Day.  I'm here to tell you its a sheepish thing to give your husband his Valentine's Day card when you've spent the night in a huff on the couch.  To be honest, I didn't actually give the card to him, I just tossed it over onto his side of the bed after I finished getting dressed this morning.  I'm not usually this chickenshit, but I'm just wiped out.

Hey, we're still in one piece.  No one's lost a finger or gotten left behind at the grocery store, at least at the last head count.  

I'm sure we'll have this down in a week or two.  I just hope to God the Chihauahua's butt dries up.

 

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I love the way memory is so intricately connected to the senses.  A smell, a taste, a song can take me back along the timeline of my life, often to a place or person or event I've not thought about in years.  There are times when the reverse is true as well -- a memory will evoke a sensory response.  I look at a picture of me cradling my infant daughter and I can smell milk and lavender-scented baby wash.    I can flip through an album of old remodeling pictures and remember the feeling of being caked with soot and fine black dirt from taking four layers of roofing material off our old house.

I have tons of photo albums full of images I really should put in digital format to preserve them.  For every picture that was developed and put into an album, there are about five more that didn't make it into the highlight reel of my life.  Those photos and all of the duplicates that didn't get given to friends, relatives or grandparents, they are all in a plastic bin in the extra bedroom.  The last time I really went through them is when my ex and I divided our belongings and I needed to go through and give him an equal sampling of our joint history as captured on film.  The problem with going through that box is that what started off as a planned one-hour project quickly turned into a four-hour journey into the recesses of memory.  I need to go through that box and get its contents put into a more durable format, and right now I don't dare.

I would love to tell you I live life with no regrets, but the hubris of saying so would only invite the Universe to go right ahead and unleash the Kraken. 

There are people I've lost touch with that I wish I hadn't.  There are people I've hurt that I wished I hadn't.  There are people I've loved that I wished I hadn't.   Choices I've made that were so monumentally stupid that I'm shocked it was me that made them. 

As many regrets as I may have, marrying my ex and having our children is not one of them.  Sure, there were times during our separation and divorce that I wondered if it had really been worth it, but that was mere misery beating its breast.  My children are the greatest treasure of my life, and I would not trade one moment with them for any amount of money, comfort, or success.  I don't make that statement lightly; In the past months I've had career opportunities dangled in front of me that were definite steps up the ladder in terms of title and income.  Two questions I asked myself: 

1.  Is there anything so wrong with my life right now that I would consider making a dramatic change?

2.  Would this career advancement make me less available to my children?

The answers were and are crystal clear.

My babies are not babies anymore, but they aren't teenagers either.  The years remaining where they will really need me the way they do now are few.    I see no gain in wasting what small time I have left of their childhood.   Its not selfless; I worry less what they would think of me if I treated my career as being more important than their needs.  I worry more what I would think of myself if that were true.

When it comes to my children, the only possible regret I have is that I have only two.  Before I met SG I didn't give it much of a thought.  In the last year or so, however, its been an oft-discussed topic.  I've examined every ramification and rejected all of them up until the realization that one reaches a point in life where it is no longer optimal to be pregnant or raising an infant.  I don't want to be depositing my youngest into Kindergarten when I'm 52. 

Its just water under the bridge now, but that doesn't mean my soul is yet fully convinced I should be done having babies.  If anything I wish that I'd started earlier.  I was already considered to be in "advanced maternal age" when I had my daughter.  Three months shy of my 40th birthday I delivered my son.   By the time it would have been about right to consider another baby, we were in the throes of a cross-country move which was soon followed by a string of diagnoses and eventually the end of a marriage.  

I'm left to imagine who a child of this marriage might be.  Every time the kids say they wished they had a little brother or sister I feel a sharp pang of loss for the alternate life's journey where I wasn't on the wrong half of my forties or had gotten my shit together a lot sooner.  An alternate timeline where I met SG more than a decade sooner, or wasn't so old now or where we hadn't chosen permanent options regarding fertility.

The days for babies are over for me.  All that's left to me now are pictures, videos and the occasional pang of regret.  The reality I live in is truly sufficient; I am fulfilled by my relationships with my family.   There is nothing that I need that I do not have in abundance.  Sometimes, though, its not the things you need that trip you up; its the things you think you want.

 

Yes I would

 

A very smelly dog who hasn't had a bath yet is lying almost entirely on my pillow as my husband sleeps, oblivious.  The stitches from her surgery haven't come out yet, so we haven't been able to give her a much-needed bath. 

Exasperated, I kiss the dog on the head and shake my husband awake.  "You want to move the dog?" I ask.  "If you're going to let her stink up the bed, let it be on your side." 

For a moment I think "He's lucky I love him."  It only takes a moment or two for me to remember that I'm pretty lucky he loves me.

Sometimes its something powerful that causes you to consider the depth of your feelings for someone; other times its the mundane.  Considering how often we annoy the shit out of each other, its amazing we remember at all.  But remember we do.

The other day I'm sitting in the living room quietly minding my own business and he feels the need to come in, change the channel to some band I've never heard of doing a live concert and then turn the volume waaayyyyyy up. 

Annoyed, I gather my things and change rooms, grumbling the whole way about how I live here too, you know, and not everyone wants to listen to music all the time.  Then again, its likely he feels the same way about my tendency to try on every outfit I own and leave all the stuff I decided against piled up in the middle of the bed for him to deal with after I leave for work, or to wake him up at 5:00 in the morning because I something large and furry went scurrying when I opened the garage door and I needed him to prove it was a kitten and not a rat.  And he even went along with me when I suggested that if it was actually a kitten we should probably start feeding it. 

This morning I'm putting on my makeup and he comes and leans against the bathroom doorjamb, watching.

"Why do you watch this?" I ask.  "How am I supposed to maintain any sense of mystery?  Not that there's a lot left to the imagination at this point..."

"A woman's personality is always a source of mystery" he says, laughing and kissing me.

I am lucky that my dear husband is a forgiving sort of fellow, he likewise that I am a woman inclined to seek the good.  We're both old enough to be at peace with our respective faults, which makes it far easier to accept them in others. When I finally reached a point in my life where my self-love was greater than my self-loathing, that's when I met the person who could love me as I am.  Perhaps the fact that I had come to accept and even at times celebrate my own strengths and acknowledge and forgive my own weaknesses made it easier for someone else to come along and love me too.

Even though life is busy and like most people I invest too much of my time and energy slogging through the daily grind of work, chores and bills, there are times on my long commute that I turn off the radio and pay attention.  Driving through the frozen desert and the stubbled, winter-barren crop circles, I reflect on the mystery of us and one more time am humbled by just how lucky I am, at this stage in my life, to know this kind of love.

 

I would marry this man again in a heartbeat.  Yes, I would.