A Gratitude Post From the Grinch

Listen.  I know that bloggers everywhere are posting these wonderful essays that beautifully articulate in the most heart-tugging of ways all that they are grateful for in this world: their families, their health, their friends.  In fact, for this entire past month, as I've been reading daily gratitude posts from Facebook friends, it's been my intention to sit down and write one of those posts myself.  But you know what? It's the day before Thanksgiving and I am just.....not there.

Sure, sure I'm grateful as well for my family, my health, my friends.  But I'm pretty much thankful for those things all year long.  This last week however, any warm fuzzy feelings that may have resided in my heart have shriveled up and died. Well, maybe they haven't died.  Maybe they've just gone into a coma, induced by all the exasperation I've been experiencing in my last week of driving and shopping.  (Don't drive and shop in the days before Thanksgiving.  It's bad for your warm fuzzies.)

So, if you all want a gratitude list from me, this is the best I can do at the moment:

1) I'm thankful that I don't have to go to the grocery store again until after Thanksgiving (knock on wood).  My ESCR (Extreme Shopping Cart Rage- read all about it here) was in full force.   At least there was no ferret sightings this year.

2) I'm thankful that Christmas time is actually here now, so that I don't have to get cranky about the fact that it's been shoved down my throat for the entire month of November. Even my children have bought into the belief that Christmas season should start the day after Halloween.  They've been pestering me to start decorating the house, and while I refused to budge from my stance that November is still fall and deserves a fall-like ambiance, the girls took it upon themselves to decorate a few household items.

Behold, our festive paper towel holder and tinsel-tinged lamp shade.

Fa la-dee-da.

3)  I'm glad I'm not rich, because if I were, I may have to drive like the entitled d-bags that I've seen on the road these past few weeks.   I believe my train of thought would go something like this: "Bahaha.  Look at my beautiful sports car!  It does not deserve to be parked with such lowly common cars as these!  Alas, this grocery store has no valet.  Let me park across three parking spaces in this already crowded parking lot, just to ensure that my car is safe from the riffraff that gathers here.  I'm sure the peons will understand- they seem to survive when I cut them off in traffic and hold up lanes of traffic while I decide where I'm going.... snicker snicker.)

Am I getting a bit mean? Just let me finish up with one more thing to be grateful for.

4) I am grateful that so many people are becoming more aware of corporate greed and capitalism on holidays.  It's wonderful that they are worried about the employees who are losing out on spending Thanksgiving with their families.  I am grateful that I've been saying this ever since my waitressing days, when I had to work 4 Thanksgivings in a row and one Christmas morning.  It's not just the retail employees that miss holidays with their families.  Maybe Americans can start thinking of employees in the food industry as well?

So now that I've worked myself up into full grinch mode, let me try to end on a positive note.  There is one thing that I'd like to express gratitude for, and that's you guys- the ones who read this blog and leave me encouraging comments.  Thank you for letting me know if I've made you laugh, or if I've made you think, or if you can relate to what I'm saying.   I can not tell you how grateful I am for that. This is just a little tiny blog, and it's always going to be a little tiny blog, and I like it that way- as long as you guys are here, too.  So thanks for coming here.

One more thing, since my warm fuzzies are waking up.  Here's one of my all-time favorite pictures of the kiddos from a few Thanksgivings ago.

Just look at those faces laughing with each other.  They make my heart so happy.

I hope your Thanksgiving table is surrounded by all of your favorite faces.  Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

When You Thank A Soldier

A few months ago, I accompanied my parents on a trip to Washington D.C. I'd never been there before, but my parents had been numerous times.  This time, they were there because my mom was attending a conference. Unsurprisingly, DC has a ton of extra security measures in and out of places which has proved difficult in the past for my dad, who lost 80% of his hearing in Vietnam. He's had embarrassing experiences of holding up lines while he tries to understand what the guard is asking of him.  So, besides being nice and just giving me a vacation, my parents also brought me so that I could be my dad's "ears".  (By the way, I was terrible at this job.  Half the time I would blow through the metal detector, only to turn around and see that my dad had been stopped and was trying to read the guard's lips.  Daughter fail.)

The first day that we were there, we went to the Holocaust Museum and then all around the National Mall.  I jokingly told my dad that the day's theme was "death and destruction", which yes, may be a little glib and irreverent, but I think we needed to lighten the mood after the intensity of The Holocaust Museum.  The sun was sinking as we made our way back from the Jefferson Memorial and my dad asked if I'd seen everything at the mall that I had wanted to see.  

"Well, what about the Vietnam Wall?"  I asked. 

"Oh, ok.  You want to see that?" he asked.  He seemed non-committal, but I couldn't tell if he didn't want to go or if he was truly surprised that I wanted to see it.  While I was growing up, Vietnam was practically a sixth member of our household.  I don't mean that we talked about it a lot- in fact, we did exactly the opposite.  We did not talk about it.  We kids knew that our dad had fought in Vietnam and that he'd been shot.  When we were little, he used to tell us that the long scar on his leg was really a sleeping snake.  We learned later that he'd been shot on Hamburger Hill.  At the dinner table when I was five, I asked him if he had ever killed anyone.  After a moment of shocked silence, he quietly answered "I've killed lots of people, Tacy.", and went back to eating his mashed potatoes, while I tried to figure out why I felt like I had just done something wrong.

We lived with PTSD, not knowing that it was PTSD.  We knew he was angry, and we thought (for a long time) that it was our fault.    We knew our family was a little bit different, but we didn't know why.  Vietnam was always there, but we didn't have any words to name it, so when I say that Vietnam was a sixth member of our household, that's what I mean; it was an invisible, nameless presence.  So of course I wanted to see The Wall.  In a way, it was a physical manifestation of that invisible family member.  

However, though I knew that my dad had been to see The Wall before, I didn't know if he was purposefully avoiding it on this trip.  I didn't want to drag him over and drudge up bad memories or feelings.  So I said "Eh.  That's okay.  I'd like to see it, but I can get over to it another time."  

"No, it's okay. You want to see it.... let's go."   And he began walking towards it in the fast-paced walk that he's always had, the one that requires me to maintain a steady trot to keep up.  So I did, wondering the whole time if I was being selfish. 

When we got there, he slowed down.  I didn't know if he planned on going through it or not, so I, feeling guilty, walked ahead, planning to just walk through myself and then double back to him.  

To be honest, the experience of the memorial wasn't what I thought it'd be. The Wall itself is purposefully understated.  It's just a granite wall with names.  You start at street level, where the granite slab with the engraved names of the first few casualties is just a foot high.  Then the wall grows, and the list of names grows, and by the time you are reading names from the height of the war, you've completely descended beneath the lawn of the National Mall.  As you continue walking, the list grows smaller once again, until you've once again reached street level and the names of the last to die are commemorated on the final, and smallest, granite panel.  The names on that very last panel made my heart especially heavy, I guess because being last to die in a war that's this close to being over seems unjustly tragic. (Then again, what's just about any of those names being there?) 

I found my dad, who had hung back to look up someone from his platoon.  

"Did you find him?' I asked. 

"Nah. I'm not sure that I even have the right last name."  In silence, we began our walk back over the Mall.  

"It's a lot of names, huh?"  It was more of a comment from him than a question.  I remained silent, feeling that he was going to say more.  Anytime my dad talks about Vietnam, it feels like he's giving me a little gift- a glimpse into understanding what he's gone through.   I walked beside him until he started speaking again:

"You know, I was talking about Vietnam with a family friend once.  I said something like 'Who knows how many lives were lost there', and the friend stated matter-of-factly '58,151'- like that was the end of the discussion.  He missed my point completely.  I was trying to say that making it out of Vietnam didn't mean that you always had a life to come back to."

And then he proceeded to tell me about guys he knew who received Dear John letters from their wives and girlfriends days before they lost half their bodies in combat.  They may have made it out of Vietnam, but the lives that they had left back home- the ones in which they were a whole being with supportive wives- that life was lost in a jungle somewhere in Vietnam.  And there are thousands and thousands of people like them, not necessarily all amputees.  Some returned with their whole bodies and a hole in their soul.  The common thread is that many came back home and found that what they knew of their "life" was gone.

I don't know if my dad knew that I'd kind of always intuited that feeling about Veterans- that a lot of them were people with two lives, really; one "before" and one "after".  I've felt for a long time that war can take a life without really taking a life.  I think it's something that people who live with war-traumatized veterans just understand.   I do wonder, though, if other people get it.  I wonder if they know that when they are thanking a soldier who's been in combat, if they really know what they are thanking him/her for.  I wonder if they realize that even though he/she may be standing in front of them, the soldier's old life may have ended somewhere in a desert or in a jungle, or any place else halfway across the world.  Do they know that the road to a new life takes them through a special kind of hell and that they have to push through all kinds of physical and mental pain, all kinds of guilt and bad memories- and that it never really all goes away? Is that the sacrifice they are thanking them for?

I haven't been in combat, so I'm not in a position to state this as fact, but I do feel that surviving a war takes more courage than any act of bravery that occurs on a battlefield.  When I thank a soldier who's been in combat, I'm thanking them for sacrificing their life before and for continuing the battle in their life after.

When I thank a soldier, that's what I'm thanking them for.

  

The Matter of Mattering

Look.  I'll be honest with you.  I sat down to write this post because I'm a little angry.  I've been stewing on a conversation for the past couple of weeks, trying to process it, trying to swallow it down, trying to look at it from a more graceful perspective, and it's just not working.  I'm pissed and there's not a lot to do about it other than to just let time work it's magic.

Oh, okaaaaay.  I guess I can write about it too.

A few weeks ago, I was enjoying a meal with some people.  They are people who matter to me, and it's important that I mention that, because had the same conversation been with people who I didn't care about, you wouldn't be reading this.  You see, I was misunderstood, or rather, what I do was misunderstood, and while I can brush off being misunderstood by random friends or acquaintances, being misunderstood by people who matter just.... well, it sucks.  It takes up a lot of head space.

We were having a perfectly pleasant conversation when the subject of me going back to work was brought up.  This is a term that has always rubbed me the wrong way, because it can easily be construed to suggest that I've not worked in the six years since I left the classroom to be a mom. Now I know, and you know, and the Lord above knows that I have worked harder in these last six years than I ever had at any job in my entire life- and that's saying a lot; especially when you consider that I spent my early twenties waitressing in a coffee shop out here where the senior citizens used to make me do things like puree their Turkey Gumbo soup.  (That was so they could eat it because they forgot their dentures at home. True story.)

So.  As I was saying, the term "go back to work" caused me to bristle, but I smiled past it because while perhaps the semantics implied that I've been on a six year vacation, most likely what these people really meant was "When are you going to go back and earn some real money?"  In hindsight, I should've been smart and given them a polite version of "None of your business.", but instead I informed them that I probably wouldn't be going back to the classroom.   This caused eyebrows to be raised (and once again, my skin... it bristled).

While I won't recount the rest of the conversation, I will tell you that by the time it was done, I had been compared to a family friend of theirs who apparently is much better at life than I ("Well, she works full time with three kids and she manages okay."), reminded that "every job has it's good and bad side" (as if the 15 years of experience in the work force and 10 years of parenting hadn't made that clear to me), and then made to feel that if I only had a job with some security, my husband could take bigger risks in his job (so, WOW... I've been holding him back.  Who knew?)
All of a sudden, instead of feeling like a Mother, a Wife, an Educator, a Woman, I felt like a wifey.

To make matters worse, all of this was said in a we're trying to help you tone that was so incredibly condescending.... and I just sat and nodded through it all.

Because I hate confrontation.

Because I hate disappointing people.

Because I don't know how to tactfully stand up for myself.

Because I was frozen by the feeling of not being enough.

Now, I don't need any affirmations.  I'm not writing this with the hopes that you all will comment and reassure me that I'm doing a great job, that I'm a great mom.  I know that I am doing as well as any other mom out there, and that in my kids' eyes, I'm imperfect perfection (HA!).  Eventually, when Roo is in school full time, I'll find my way back to a career- though I believe my path is heading more towards student advocacy, or some kind of home-to-school connection role.  In the meantime, I've created a part-time job for myself that allows me to work around my kids' schedule and grow in my field while bringing in a small income, and I'm REALLY proud of myself for that.  In fact, I think I've kind of kicked ass in this whole mom-kid-work-juggling routine.  So, trust me, no affirmations needed.

In fact, even just in writing this, I feel a little less angry.  I know that these people live by a "make as much money as you can for as long as you can" philosophy, which is very different from my "Do the best you can everything will work out in the end" philosophy.  Both ways have their perks and their flaws.  What bothers me the most about this is the fact that they are never going to get me.  They'll never understand our family.  For me, money is a thing; the way soccer practice is a thing, the way doctor appointments are a thing; the way good food is a thing.  It's a part of life, and while of course, OF COURSE more money would be nice, I know that more of it wouldn't change anything that matters for the better, because all the things that matter here are already as good as they can be.

Nonetheless, now I am faced with the task of making the opinion of these People Who Matter, matter less.  And that's a really hard thing to do- like growing an extra layer of skin.

Or pureeing Turkey Gumbo soup in a malt tin for the old folk.

I wouldn't wish either on anyone.

Thanks for listening.

Payback

Hello, readers.  Welcome to my dark side.

You may remember that several weeks ago, I posted a photo on Facebook of a prank that my husband played on me.


Remember this?

That Barbie head has actually been passed back and forth between us for a few years now.  I'm not even sure how it got started, but I think it may have been a few years ago around Halloween time when Mr. C mounted her head on a stick.  I vetoed it.  There may or may not have been an argument.  All I know is that the next morning, I opened up my underwear drawer and there was Barbie's disembodied head laying there, looking up at me.  Of course, my natural inclination was to take the high road and remain silent about it- which I did, right after I placed her square in the center of Mr. C's medicine cabinet for him to discover the next morning- which he did.  Then he slipped her away and quietly hid her in another good spot a few weeks later, for me to once again find.

And so it went.  Sometimes she appears in a few places within a week, sometimes she's absent for months and months.  But she always comes back.

Oh yes.  She always comes back.

So, a few weeks ago, when he put her on my car antennae and let me drive her around to two different schools and then across town to a client's house, I vowed revenge.  Except, I knew that it had to be good.  Disembodied Barbie has already been everywhere surprising or funny in our house, and I have to hand it to Mr. C; putting her on the car antennae was really a genius move.  It was very clear to me that to break even with him, I'd have to kick this whole thing up a notch.  Perhaps even, it was time to include other..... props.  (smirk)

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, my revenge:

Oh wait.  That's a little far away.  Here, try this:

That's right.  He doesn't know it yet, but he's the proud new owner of a bumper sticker that lets the world know exactly how awesome his wife is.  And don't worry, it's magnetic.  I'm smart enough to know that a girl shouldn't mess with a man's truck (unless your Carrie Underwood). A permanent sticker-backed one would've landed us in the divorce court.  

The beauty of all this is that by the time you all are reading this, he will have walked out the door into the brisk morning air, gotten into the cab of his truck and unknowingly proclaimed his love for me all the way down the 10 freeway.  And just for good measure, Barbie's on the antennae.

You see, she loves the smell of revenge in the morning.

Bwahahahahaha. 

*Update- Damn Mr. C.  As soon as I heard the front door close this morning, I ran to the front windows to watch my evil plan go into action.  He walked right past the bumper sticker to his antennae, pulled off the Barbie head, stuck it on my car, and then upon walking back to his truck, saw the bumper sticker.  Then he turned around and saw me spying out the window.  Then he took off his shirt and put on one that was hanging in his car.  That part was confusing.  (Why'd you do that, Mr. C?) 

Anyway, he's no fun.  I am now taking suggestions for new ideas to exact revenge.  What I lack in hatching evil plans, I make up for in perseverance.  

Oh Dignity, You Elusive Devil...

A long, long time ago when the kids were much smaller, I came home from a trip to the grocery store and wrote the following status on Facebook "Took two kids to the grocery store and came back with all of my sanity and most of my dignity.  Yay me!"

Seems kind of silly that I'd feel the need to share something like that with the world (although, not really when you consider that all of Facebook is just mostly people sharing their non-sequitars with the world).  Anyway, that dignity stealing thing was happening a lot more often back then.  An exploded diaper in a public place, a tantrum that came out of the blue, a random cheerio stuck to my butt....these were the indignities I suffered many a day when my babes were young.  Lately however, the humiliation has slowed.  In fact, it darn near stopped and I got comfortable with the idea that I'd be able to go public places with my children without humiliation being a factor.  I thought I could count all those uncomfortable memories as things of the past..... and then this week happened.  You see how my life works?  I get comfortable with something and then The Universe laughs and throws it all in my face.  It's like my comfortableness is Charlie Brown and The Universe is my eternal Lucy, ruining my point-scoring kick at the last second, every time.

So, last week one of my children shoplifted.  Said child is very embarrassed and humiliated by this (GOOD), so I will refrain from naming this child.  Here's what you need to know: we all went to Target to get a present for an upcoming birthday party.  While I was checking out, this child apparently took a York Peppermint Patty from the candy stand and shoved it into their pocket. Once home, this child quietly snuck down the hall, chowed the candy, and tried to dispose of the wrapper by flushing it down the toilet.  Said child's brain is not developed enough to realize that when flushing evidence, one should stick around to make sure that their giant foil wrapper actually does make the trip all the way down the toilet.

So, a half hour later 9 comes in and reports that there is a giant candy wrapper clogging the toilet.  I ask the obvious question, and after some digging and threatening, a sibling comes forward and confesses that they saw this child steal the candy.  They add that they didn't tell me because the theif/sibling told them not to.  Child vehemently denies accusation.  I deal with the fact that I am dealing with one lying thief and one accomplice.

Long story short: I spend the next three hours pulling out every parenting technique I possess to get this child to confess.  I reason.  I yell.   I call Matt, who is gone for the weekend.  Child still doesn't confess.  Next, I call on The Lord and remind this child of how Jesus feels about thieves and liars.  Child still doesn't confess.  So finally, I call Target and ask if they can bring up video tape evidence.  They can't (or they won't because it's a York Peppermint Patty and not the Hope Diamond.)  Child stands by silently and refuses to confess.  

Nothing is working.  Good Cop, Bad Cop, Catholic guilt (and we're not even Catholic).... this child knows that all evidence is circumstantial and heresy.

So then, I put both children involved in the car (while remaining sibling stays home with 9 and sobs in fear that the siblings will be going to Juvy Hall) and drive the pair back to Target,where, upon confrontation from a uniformed security guard-who is all of 18 years old-,the child confesses straightaway.

I put my hands in my pockets so they don't wrap themselves around my child's neck, which is what they very badly want to do.

The security guard asks my child why he/she took the candy.  Child looks at the floor and mumbles "Um, I took it because it tasted so so so good."

The security guard bursts out laughing, and I shoot him my most severe look.  I say "Officer," (Yes, I know he wasn't an officer, but since I'm in the process of scaring my kids straight, I'd rather eat boiled scorpions than have them know the difference).  "I have two kids here who are thieves and liars.  I didn't know I was raising kids like this, and I need to fix it.  Please tell them what happens to people  when they are caught stealing."  

And in that little speech, I lose all dignity. My voice chokes up because I'm angry and exhausted, and when I'm angry and exhausted, I cry.  I wish that when I feel angry I could be formidable or even eerily calm, but no.  Instead my face gets red and my voice gets wobbly.  I watch as two nearby sales associates take quick leave and immediately I know what they see:  a hysterical mom who is getting all worked up over a .99 stolen piece of candy.  Even the security guard is looking at me like "Get a grip, Polly."  So as I'm watching my dignity slowly swirl down the drain, I decide to do what I did in the early days of diaper humiliations and toddler tantrums:  I swallow my pride and sit in the humiliation. This is in exchange for the lesson the kids needed to learn.  Stealing can not become a habit around here, and frankly, the stealing worries me less than the lying.  The extent and steadfastness of the lying bothers me much, much more.

So, the security guard straightens up and tells the kids very seriously what happens when people are caught shoplifting.  The child pays for the candy out of his own wallet, and then the security guard asks them if they are going to steal again.  They shake their heads no.  I thank him and march the kids out of the store with my head held high, even though, to be honest with you, if the earth had decided to open itself up at my feet just then, I would've gladly jumped in.

The universe wasn't done with me yet.  Three days after the shoplifting incident, more public humiliation.  I'll keep this one short:

Imagine that you are at the mall and you walk by the window of a jewelry store, and in that window, you see a young girl sitting in a chair with her mother close by.  You assume that she is there to get her ears pierced.  You stop to watch.  Her weird mother is trying to mouth something to you... what is it?  She's shaking her head and making gestures... is she telling you to go?  Humph!  It's a free country.  You're going to stay and watch this little girl get her ears pierced!

You see the shopgirl approach the girl with a cotton ball.  The girl's mother gives up on you and focuses on the girl, who is swatting away the shop girls hand every time she tries to get close to her ear.    You see the mom smiling, cajoling, talking quietly to the girl.  She's trying to get her to do deep breathing exercises.  The girl continues to move her head away and cry.  Apparently she doesn't want to get her ears pierced!  Why would this mother force her like this?  Oh my, it's getting worse!  The girl is now loudly crying and the mother has switched her approach.  Now she's talking sternly to the girl.  The shop girl gestures and the mother is now holding the girls head in both her hands!  This is terrible!  She practically has the girl in a head lock!  You can't watch anymore.  With a disgusted look through the window at the terrible mom, you walk away.

That was PG and me, except PG wasn't there to get her ears pierced.  She was there because we had thought that the front of her earring had broken off.  The shopgirl was trying to remove the post.  Once it was clear that PG wasn't going to let her do it, we went to Urgent Care where the doctor informed us that the entire earring had been swallowed up by her earlobe.  So she was justified in her pain and swatting. (And yes, we had been cleaning it and turning it every day.  In fact, we have picture proof from the day before that both her ear and earring were healthy and visible the day before.  She slept on it at a party and woke up with it gone.  So who knew?)

So.  This has not been one of my better weeks as a mother, because in addition to the thieves and liars living under this roof, you can add child abuser.  Me. I feel horrible.

I don't have a clever way of ending this, except to caution the parents out there: don't even let yourself feel comfortable in this job.  Dignity and parenting do not go hand in hand.  However, days like this do make me believe that parenting and wine do go hand in hand.  If I had known what this past week was going to do to me, I would've bought stock in some vineyards.

On Perfection, Ideal Self, and Sacred Acts of Motherhood

You guys.  I was awesome yesterday.  I don’t know what was in my cereal, but whatever it was carried me through eight loads of laundry. E-i-g-h-t.  Eight.  And it wasn’t your normal weekly laundry, either.  It was back to school laundry, in which I washed, dried, and hung tons and tons of uniform shirts and bottoms.  Did I leave the last load sitting in the wash to mildew because I was too tired to get up and change it over to the drier? No!  Did I fold it all and put it away? Yes!  Is there still a random pile of socks sitting on the entertainment center waiting to be claimed?  For the first time since we’ve brought the little people into the world I can honestly answer, No!  No, there is not.  I was a machine, people.  A machine. (Fist pump!)

Not only that, but I filled out all the necessary back-to-school forms, stuffed backpacks, cleaned the house, and cooked dinner.  I even made muffins so that the kids could have a yummy back to school breakfast (Whaaaaaat? Who am I? I don’t even know.)  And at the end of the night, I sat back on the couch and thought to myself, “This is as close to motherly perfection as I’m ever going to get.”  At least, I hope that’s the closest I get to it, because I’m telling you, I can not do this crap every day.  

If there is  one thing about motherhood that makes my skin bristle, it’s the pressure to be perfect. Ten years in, and I’m still not sure where this pressure comes from, but I’m certain that it’s there.  My friend Jennifer gave me a theory that kind of fits with this- we call it the “Ideal Self”.  The ideal self is like a Pinterest Board- you see something and you think, “Heck yeah, I can do this!”.  And then you either never get around to it, or you do and the results are not even in the ballpark of what you were originally aiming to achieve.  There is always a gap between our ideal selves and who we really are.  But I think I’ve learned something about this gap. I think that maybe this is where us moms are supposed to be.  Glennon Melton helped me realize this.

At the beginning of this past summer, Miss G wrote a post titled “On Momotony and Sacred Work” in which she compares a mother’s work to that of monk’s... it’s repetitive, yet sacred.  I loved her perspective, but my brain read words like “monks” and “sacred” and connoted it with perfection.  I thought she was perpetuating the myth of motherhood; that we should all face it with serenity and sanctity.... with perfection.  My problem with that- well, there’s so many, but I’ll start with the fact that it’s easy to be holy and good inside a monastery where there is peace and quiet and most importantly, no children.  Try feeling sacred in a minivan where the longest record for “The Quiet Game” doesn’t even reach a minute.  Not the same thing.  

The post nettled me.  I chewed on it for weeks.  I didn’t let it go because I had this intuition that in my struggle with it, there was a truth that I needed to get to.  It wasn’t until I went back and reread it for the third time that it occurred to me, no where in there did she drop the word ‘perfect’.  She wasn’t asking us to be perfect, she was asking us to see our work as sacred. Sacred is not the same thing as perfect.  You can be imperfect and still be sacred.  Thus, everyone is perfectly imperfect.  Mind blown.  

 Let’s leave the practice of perfection for monks and the Dahlai Lama.  Let them become enlightened in the sanctity of their monasteries and on top of their mountains so that  they can bring their lessons back to the world at large.  Us moms, though? We’re lucky.  Our job is to teach the little ones about the world by living in it, in it’s messy and terrible beauty.  I think one of the best things I can teach my kids is that perfection is an illusion, that appreciation and wisdom comes from living down in the world’s sacred mess. 

So with that said, I’ll admit that yesterday was great.  Yesterday my ideal self got down with her bad self and made a temporary appearance in my home.  She was awesome.  Look at those sharpened pencils,that neat stack of paid bills, the dust free keyboard.  That is a perfectly clean desk.   But I know that anytime now, I’ll revert to being the mom who forgets when it’s her turn to brings snacks, who’ll be late to soccer practice, who is short on patience and long on her love for kettle chips.  Thus, when my desk is back to normal and covered in it’s usual array of school assignments, grocery lists, soccer schedules, bills, and anything else that pertains to the nitty gritty ins-and -outs of running of my famiily’s life, I’ll know my sacred work has really begun..  

Happy September, friends.  It brings me so much joy to be working down here in the messy sacred world of our kids, with you.  

Bikini

I'm hoping the title of this post doesn't scare people away.  Because, really? What kind of interesting reading can this be for people? You either wear a bikini or you don't right? Do I really need to devote an entire blog post to the subject?

Turns out I do.

I'm going to turn forty next year.  I've noticed that on the beach, amongst my age group there are three different types of women: the ones trying to cover up all their "problem" areas with modest one pieces, tankinis, sarongs, and board shorts.  Then you have the proud bikini wearing mamas, who most likely  have the discipline to put in the hours at the gym to maintain their bodies.  And last is the group who'll wears anything they want- usually bikinis- despite the fact that they are far, far, far from anyone's idea of the Sports Illustrated Cover Model.

I'm usually in the first group, though I spent most of the past year half-heartedly trying to get to the ranks of the second group.  But for the latter half of my vacation, I forced myself to be in that last group, and I'm glad I did because I ended up making some surprising (to me, anyway) revelations.

But first let me take you back a bit.  When I learned last December that I would be vacationing in Hawaii this summer, I told myself that I was going to work hard and dedicate myself to getting into shape.  If you've been following this blog for any length of time, then you probably died of laughter before you even finished reading that sentence.  No one would be surprised, least of all myself, to hear that I didn't do it.  I didn't do it, and even worse, I sabotaged myself in the 3 months before I went and gained 5 pounds on top of the ten I wanted to lose.  (Why do I operate this way?  I don't know.  I'm sure the psychological reasoning is very Freudian and fascinating, but my interest in getting to the bottom of it is heavily blocked by the bottles of wine and kettle chips. It's hard to get past them.)

To get back to the story, I was a little disgusted with myself.  My friend had posted a picture of herself and her husband from their vacation in which she was wearing a bikini and looking fabulous. She was holding her husband's hand and grinning over her shoulder at the camera, while the sun created fabulous light that played on the ocean's surface in the background.  I wanted so badly for that to be me.  That picture was my inspiration and motivation for the entire time that I dedicated myself to my goal, the whole 4 out of 24 weeks of it.

Once on the island, it was with not a little self-loathing and bitterness that I unpacked my tankini and  my "slim fit" one piece, which, my friends, don't let the name mislead you, is not for slim people.  It's for chubby people who want to appear slimmer- and trying to pull it on is as much fun as trying to pull on a rubber corset (or so I would imagine, for those of you whose eyebrows just shot up).   I should also mention that snorkeling in that thing almost caused me to pass out since, even on land, it only permitted me the shallowest of breaths.  Underwater with a snorkel?  Fuhgettabouit.


Let me stop here for a moment and clarify something:  there is nothing wrong with tankini's or board shorts or one pieces for those people who like to wear them.  It's just that it's not a good idea to wear them when you're using them as a subconscious punishment to yourself.  And that's what they were to me.  I used to love the way I felt in a bikini.  I wore one almost everyday of every summer growing up- whether I was lounging in my backyard or at the beach.  I like gliding through water in one.  I like the way my back looks with that one string across the back.  I just like them.  And after I had kids, because my body was not the same, because my hips were wider and my stomach softer, I was ashamed of it.  So when I was pulling on the massively constricting one piece, or trying to swim around while a dumb tankini top kept floating up around my middle, I told myself that it was because I wasn't worthy anymore of a bikini.   In my head, I was protecting others from the horrible vicious sight of me in a two piece.  


How did I get to be so mean and critical of myself? 

One of my favorite people, Nora Ephron had wrote “Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was twenty-six. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don't take it off until you're thirty-four.”  I wish I had listened to her.  My metabolism is way past what it was at 34, and gravity is working it's weird magic all over my body, but I decided on that day, while there in Hawaii at least, I was going to be nicer to myself.  That meant forgiving myself for not looking like a bikini model.  It meant trying to push past all the cultural expectations and worries about what I looked like to others.  It meant joining the ranks of  that third group on the beach.  

So the next morning, I ditched the fam and ducked into a bathing suit shop where I bought a cute  bikini in my favorite color of blue.  Then I wore it.  I wore it despite my stomach that does a weird tri-foldy thing when I sit down.  I wore it despite my love handles.  I wore it even though my legs jiggled way more than I was comfortable with.  Did I feel great?  Please.  I can't lie.  It took a while to get over the self consciousness of it.  But I tell you what.  After ten years of swimming around with yards of extra material from tankinis and swim skirts floating up and getting in my way, it felt so good to snorkel in those blue, blue waters unencumbered by flappy board shorts or a waterproof corset.  And the bikini also gifted me with my most favorite souvenir of the whole trip: the tan line left by that one string across my back.

*Ideally, a blog post titled Bikini would contain a picture of me in said bikini.  This is the best I can do.  Swimming in a bikini was fun.  Lounging in a bikini was great.  Walking around a beach with my kids looking for sea turtles  in a bikini required shorts.  Sorry.  It's a bit of a cop out.  Maybe next year I'll write Bikini Part 2, in which I'll work up the courage to love myself enough to not care about being photographed while walking around in a two piece.  Then again, that probably won't be necessary since I fully plan to hit the gym at 5 am every day this year.   I'm going to get in shape.  It's going to really happen! I can feel it! 

(wink)