Sometimes I am sure that I am losing at being a mom. Almost daily there are moments where I think about how I just lost a battle with one of the boys or how I didn’t even show up at all for the battle. And there are times when I showed up; I just came without armor or a weapon. Inevitably I lose these battles and when I lose enough of these in a row, I feel like I am just plain losing at being a mom.
I don’t want to imply that I necessarily keep score, but some days (or weeks) it really seems like I have checked out and have given in to the irrational, moody, and unpredictable whims of a group of young men who represent fewer years collectively on this earth than I represent all by myself. On those days, score starts to matter just a little. Because I feel like I am flirting with the tipping point of world domination by elementary-aged boys. And I just cannot let them win. It is my job as a mom to stay at least a little bit ahead in score.
Today is one of those losing days. Let’s take this step by step, shall we?
My oldest son dropped his bite-sized fruit candies on the ground outside of school as we were walking to the car. Insert tantrum – with tears - here as I tried to explain that even though he was picking them all up, he would not be able to eat them. Now insert pleas for “my favorite candy in the whole wide world!” here. As I continued to explain why eating the candies was no longer an option, Chris explains to me that he once dropped a chip on the floor in our garage and he still ate it. His logic was that if the dirt from our garage didn’t kill him, certainly whatever is on the ground outside of an elementary school wouldn’t kill Alec.
For the sake of saving the unintended insult commentary for some other blog post, we will gloss right over the fact that Chris basically stated that the ground at school was cleaner than our garage. We are just gonna let that one go. For now. The point here is that I gave in. I lost. I let him eat the candy.
Mom 0. Kids 1.
When we got home, Chris went looking for a picture of a dragon that he had drawn and left in his school binder. Apparently at some point in the past week I cleaned out his school binder and recycled the dragon picture. I have no recollection of this, but considering I am the only one who ever bothers to clean out the school binders, I suppose I am guilty. Then we both remember that the recycle was placed on the curb this morning and is now gone. The dragon picture has found a new forever home. Insert nine-year-old-fit here. I lose again.
Mom 0. Kids 2.
While I was dealing with the lost dragon, Colin comes in, half crying, half screaming because the Kindle will not work properly. The child is on the verge of losing it, I am trying to defend my dragon-disposal mistake as an accident, Chris is mad at me, and I am still trying to mentally justify the candy debacle to myself. At this point “What the balls; Chill out and I will fix the Kindle for you” comes flying out of my mouth. In frustration I just used the phrase “what the balls?” when speaking to one of my children. I lose. Again.
Mom 0. Kids 3.
It is at this point that I realize that Nick is being very quiet through all of this turmoil in the house. So I set off on a reluctant quest to find him. And I do find him – silently playing in the bathroom with cups that he found in the trash, making “experiments” with water and the money he apparently “earned himself” by selling the food I packed in his lunch box to another child who was still hungry after eating. He thinks this is okay because he wasn’t going to eat it anyway. And he thinks it is especially okay because he plans to give me all the pennies. Insert deep breath here because I’ve now got all these pennies, yet I still lose. Again.
Mom 0. Kids 4.
Today is one of those losing days – so far. The good news is that as of right now it is only a little after 5pm and I still have time to earn some points. Which I will. Because I always do.
These boys may be able to take a lead on me, but they will never beat me to the finish line. When you are raising four boys, there is far too much at stake to let them think they can win the war. Little battles, pssshhh; they can have them and celebrate their victories. But the war; the war belongs to Mom.
Author’s Note: I suspended the writing of this blog post to take the boys to the school’s Spirit Night at a pizza place. It is now several hours after all the losing and they spent that time laughing, playing with friends, enjoying some food and some free time to be as crazy as they want. I just earned many points. So, at the end of the day, I guess we all win. As a family. I can’t ask for a better score than that.
I haven’t written in a week. It is killing me that I haven’t written in a week. But I am struggling with a failure to communicate issue between my brain and my hands. Every time I think about something to write I will mentally compose some initial sentences in my head as I go about whatever it is I was already doing when the idea first struck.
In my head the words string together effortlessly and beautifully. It is as if some poetic magic is happening in my head and I should actually be mentally composing my Pulitzer acceptance speech rather some blog post. And then, some length of time later, when I finally sit at the laptop to write what has been floating majestically through my head, this is what happens:
I write blog. Blog is good. Why are unicorns always white? Why can’t some of them be purple, or pink, or chartreuse? I wonder what Awesome Sauce would taste like. Would it be sweet? Or maybe savory, and really delicious on chicken? FOCUS!! This blog post is about the kids. Wait. Where are the boys? Stop. Listen. Oh, OK, I hear arguing, All is well with the boys. Nick needs some new pants. And I think someone is going on a field trip sometime soon. I remember field trips. And tennis tournaments. And telling people to “Buck up, little camper”. And on and on.
I remember when stream of consciousness was an assignment, not what happens to me when I am trying to write something with some substance and maybe a couple of sentences in a row that somewhat relate to one another. It takes either an emotional motive or a funny one for me to write something at this point in my return to the art of writing. Without either a funny or personal story to tell, I've got nothing. Nothing, that is, except evidence of the chaos that has become my thought process at all times.
For a while now I have struggled with the inability to quiet my mind. I am not overcome with worry because I have learned not to waste time with that one. He’s mean and pointless and not happening here. But I am in a constant mode of thinking about something. Perhaps it is the responsibility I feel to raise my boys the best I possibly can. Perhaps it is the fact that there are so very many things that I want to do that I have yet to begin. Perhaps it is some weird side effect of my brain having more room now to stretch out and work than it ever had before the tumor was taken out. Perhaps it is too much Pinterest. Who knows.
And to be honest, I don’t really even need to know the answer because somehow in all the madness and chaos that is my thought process, I do come up with some really good ones. Really, I do. If only they would stick around long enough to make it to the laptop. I have heard that at the end of the day writers should ask themselves the following question: Did you write today? Well, I may or may not be a “writer”, but I certainly wrote something today. No one ever said it had to make any sense.
Seriously though; what do you think Awesome Sauce would taste like?
In Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote “The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act”. This is a quote that is highlighted in my copy of Self-Reliance; the marks left there by a high school me who knew even then that these two sentences would be important. Over the years I have come back to these lines time and time again, reminding myself that no one has power over me, my emotions, or my thoughts, unless and until I grant them that power. No. One.
This past week, I forgot all about Emerson and his sage words. For five straight days I allowed the people around me to repeatedly hijack my happiness. I allowed others to determine the size of my smile. I allowed others to bring me to a place of complaint and maybe even to a place of gossipy ugliness. I am proud of none of this.
It gets hard sometimes to remember that the power is always within us. It gets especially hard for me when seclusion has been my norm for the past several years. See, I had a lot of healing to do and I wasn't interested in sharing all that pain with anyone, nor was I interested in letting anyone see how completely broken I was. It has taken years and I will probably always be in some phase of the healing process, though I am confident the very difficult work has already been done.
But part of coming out of seclusion is letting people in. And people sometimes suck. People sometimes take their personal issues out on others. People sometimes make jokes that aren't funny at all; they are actually quite cruel. People sometimes forget their tone and speak with an ugly voice. And sometimes people forget their responsibilities and place mountains of expectations in places where there should also be guidance. Not blaming here - I am a person who also can suck. I am a person who is guilty of all this and more. We are all fallible, I no less than any other.
But what really broke me this past week, the one thing that brought me to my knees, stabbing at my heart and screaming for my mind to wake up and remember; what broke me is: I Know Better. I know better than to take it personally or to allow another’s actions to determine my attitude. And even though I have felt broken before, no other broken hurts the same way it hurts when you have done it to yourself. And that is exactly what I did. I did it to myself. I took the words the wrong way. I allowed personal information out into a space where it did not belong. I forgot to seek guidance. For five straight days, I failed to take responsibility for myself.
While I may have been little slow in seeing it this past week, I do welcome the responsibility. And I welcome the reminder that if I want to be the person of my own dreams, I must not rest in my efforts. I must not take for granted the blessings that have come my way. I must not stop trusting just because there may be hurt. My own actions must not allow others to come near me in the way that Emerson warned against.
Because really, at the end of five days of struggle, the only person I was left with was me. And I don’t like the feeling of disappointment in myself. I hardly recognize it anymore because I have worked hard to make it unnecessary. Now that it has made a return visit, I now know that it is time to re-focus, re-center, and re-new all of that which I have known all along.
So, come on people; you can suck all you want. At the end of it all I will still love you. And me.
So far this afternoon, since we came home from school, the following has happened:
I made a trip to the store to pick up all the things that are needed for the boys’ Valentine’s Day parties in the freezing cold and rainy weather because I was too lazy to do it yesterday.
Nick informed me that he is now official with the girl he likes at school. Apparently 3 out of 4 of my boys are now attached. Not even okay with this. I allowed Alec to turn 10 years old last month; I thought I was done for a while with that which I cannot handle.
I decided that given the amount of coupling that is happening in this house that does not include me, Alec must either remain hopelessly devoted to his mom, or I will cry. And I don’t often cry.
Thanks to weather that is not conducive to sending the boys outside to play, an indoor ninja game that included my bedroom being transformed into a makeshift dojo ended in tears, face-plant into the door boo-boos, and what may or may not have been my nicest Mommy voice to date.
I carried an armload of dirty clothes down the stairs, walked straight to the kitchen sink, loaded them in there and turned on the water. It was not until that point that I realized I was NOT standing in front of the washing machine.
I cooked dinner for the boys and passively watched as they all carried their plates into the living room to eat. Yeah, that’s not allowed in this house without permission. But yet, it just happened. And I did nothing.
My phone rang seven times in twenty minutes with solicitor calls that may or may not have resulted in me randomly pushing buttons on the phone into someone’s ear for a full 60 seconds until I felt most of the frustration was out of me. Think they will get the hint and add me to their do not call list?
Sensing that something is not quite right with mom, one of my children, who may be the smartest at the moment, has taken the Kindle into a closet and is hiding out in there in order to avoid me at all costs. Again, smart kid.
I had to dig through Nick’s valentines that he filled out for his class, find the one on which he wrote “You are not nice” and have him do it over. That was followed by a conversation that included ideas such as if you can’t say something nice, say nothing, and why that is really not appropriate. And, in true Nick fashion, his defense was that it is the truth and he has been taught to always tell the truth. Point taken, kid. Do it over anyway.
Oh, and here’s the kicker: IT IS ONLY 6 PM!
I. Just. Can’t.
Not today. Not anymore. Seriously.
I would love to end this little post with something inspirational about how I will soldier on because I am a mom and that is what we do. I would love to end this with some declaration that I will find my big girl pants and just deal with everything that comes at me with grace and patience.
Yeah. That’s not gonna happen either.
What I can do, however, is draw a hot bath, say a prayer, and wait for bedtime. Maybe I will find those big girl pants somewhere in the bathtub, or in my prayers, but I would be willing to bet that the most likely place for them right now is in the washing machine, or the kitchen sink, or wherever the laundry gets clean in this house.
Well, I suppose it is inevitable that I write about the timeliest topic for right now. No, not the Olympics; honestly I could not care less about what is happening in Sochi. No, what I feel I should tackle here is Valentine’s Day. I have a nontraditional attitude towards V-Day and I feel that perhaps I should explain myself before being branded as one of those man-hating, ice cream consuming, cry at my loneliness ladies that hate the day and everything that goes with it. Because the truth is that while I do not love Valentine’s Day, I do not hate it either.
I simply believe now, as I have always, that love is something that should not be packaged on a shelf, coated in chocolate, and sprinkled with red rose petals, only to be consumed by those who need tangible reminders of that which is right in front of them all year long. Love, my friends, is a verb. Yes, I am aware that Webster would not agree with me here; it is indeed defined in the dictionary as a noun. Regardless, I stand by MY definition. Love is what we do. It is actions that are performed out of a sincere, deep affection for another person. Love. Is. A. Verb.
Love has little to do with roses that are bought at the eleventh hour from some grocery store parking lot tent. Love has little to do with overpriced chocolate covered strawberries. Love has little to do with getting a February 14th reservation at the most romantic restaurant in town. While all of those things may be an expression of a person’s affection, they are not necessarily love. When they are performed because of some predetermined Love Day Date, they lose all meaning to me. Then they become like pretentious tokens of affection, and not necessarily sincere affection. For some couples the Valentine’s Day ritual is more about a prove-you-love-me/look-at-how-much-I-spent-on-errr-I-mean-love-you showmanship that leaves me cold.
And in my opinion, and here is where I struggle with Valentine’s Day, no date on the calendar should be required to remind a person to love the person they love. And no date on a calendar, whether embraced or ignored, should be the determining factor in whether someone really loves you. Actions of love do not have a due date and no date should be so important that it demands flowers, or chocolate, or nice dinners that are just the two of you. These things should be sprinkled throughout a relationship, not saved for one particular day.
At the same time, there are those who truly enjoy the act of spending ridiculous amounts of money and time planning perfect Valentine’s Day events for their partner. And if that is you, I am cool with that. Just remember this: that same effort applied on a random Tuesday in July will have far more impact. That same effort and those same feelings wrapped up in a pretty package after your partner has experienced a particularly rough week will mean more.
So, regardless of your opinion of Valentine’s Day, I still wish you all of the love your heart can handle. I hope that your affection for the people you care about will be shown in the way you love them every single day, as well as on Valentine’s Day. And if you are single on Valentine’s Day, you do not have to make the day an excuse to feel sad or eat a pint of mint chocolate chip while re-reading old love notes and mentally reliving the relationships of your past. Seriously, you are better than that. You are better than to let some consumption-driven holiday bring you down and mess with your mojo. Sometimes we need the reminder that while romantic love may be lacking for the moment, there is still infinite love in all of our lives, if only we would look in the right places.
Sometimes being single on Valentine's Day is the best place for us to be.
Not that an eleventh hour bouquet of just-because-roses from a certain someone wouldn't be okay too. ;)
How old am I?
I am not too old to waste a couple of hours crafting in my mind the perfect man. And not too old to care that those hours may have been wasted. Not too old to make the statement that a man of 29 is not too young for me, or a man of 49 too old. Not too old to have forgotten what that first rush of love feels like, nor too old to forget how much work is required to make it last.
How old do I need to be to make it okay to still live in a daydream at times? How much youth must I claim in order to pardon the hours wasted? How much pain must I profess? How much anguish must be felt? How many tears fallen from swollen eyes? How many hours thinking about what went wrong?
How old am I?
I am too young to quit the fantasy, but I am too old to lie. Truth: I haven’t cried in a very long time. I haven’t felt anguish or pain, nor thought long and hard about any one person in a very, very long time. But I have imagined many. And I have done so because there is safety in the warmth of one’s own imagination. When the world is not offering that which the heart thinks it desires, there is mind to take over. And in the mind it can be perfect.
How old am I?
I am too old to paint it perfectly. I am old enough to paint it truthfully. I am old enough to include the fights, the breaks, the annoying little habits, the makeups, the dates, the perfect things being said at the perfect time, the laundry, the messes, the kisses. I am old enough to know all the steps, to know the ingredients and to know what I deserve. I am old enough to know all of these things.
How old am I?
I am old enough to cross blue eyes off the top of the list and replace it with kindness. I am old enough to remove all physical attributes and replace them with attributes like compassion, love for children, a sincere willingness to forgive, and faith. I am old enough to know that the beautiful men may or may not be on your brightly lit silver screen; but they are certainly ringing up your groceries, or answering your call to the cable company, or taking your vitals in the ER, or teaching your children.
How old am I?
I am thirty eight years old, but that really has little to do with this at all. I am old and young enough to be all at once an expert, a beginner, a failure, a dreamer, and a realist.
How old am I?
I am thirty eight years old. And I am young enough to wait.
I had intended to start this blog series on February 1st, but I was apparently too busy doing something else and managed to miss my own self-imposed deadline. Oh, well. These things happen. The reason that date is important is it marks two years from the date in 2012 that I went into my optometrist’s office with an appointment to get glasses. While that may seem unremarkable, the events that began with that eye appointment were anything but.
I left his office with an appointment later that day with an ophthalmologist who described a condition called idiopathic intracranial hypertension, also known as pseudotumor cerebri, that causes tumor-like symptoms without the presence of an actual tumor. This was likely what was causing the optic nerve swelling the other doctor had seen and I needed an MRI to rule out a real tumor. On February 9th I had the MRI. Twenty minutes later, as I was setting my purse down after arriving home from the imaging place, the phone rang. “You need to get some health insurance. It is a tumor, a very big one and it needs to come out as soon as possible.” While I am sure there were other words spoken during that conversation, I remember very few of them. I do remember wondering what “big” meant in terms of a brain tumor.
On Valentine’s Day 2012, a long two weeks since the I-Need-Glasses Appointment, I saw a neurosurgeon for the first time. At that appointment, I learned what “big” meant:
One of the things in this picture is doing its own thing. One of these things is definitely not like the others. It was at this point that my brain (see above) fully accepted that I have a BRAIN TUMOR! That thing is 6 cm from the back of my eyes to my pituitary gland. Apparently that ginormous thing had been squatting in my brain for years, possibly my entire life, growing slowly, and causing havoc in my frontal lobe (see almost every judgment call that I made prior to 2012).
The tumor was eventually named Matilda, a moniker assigned by my aunt. Matilda would stay with me for another seven weeks while I sorted out how to pay for an operation of this magnitude. She would also prove to be the cause of great concern on the part of those around me.
There are many things that I can list as thoughts that flew through my mind during those seven weeks, most of which centered on the attempt to obtain health insurance or what affect this situation would have on my children. But what sticks with me most are two distinct things. One is that weeks before the I-Need-Glasses Appointment, my mother had straight up asked in an exasperated sort of way if I had a brain tumor or something because I was awfully pissy lately. Can you say “foreshadowing”? Two is that before I even walked into the optometrist’s office for the I-Need-Glasses Appointment, I already knew that I had a brain problem. I knew it before the MRI and I definitely knew it as I left the imaging place. And I knew it when the phone started ringing when I got home that day.
I knew it. But I didn’t accept it. Not until the picture was presented to me. It was then that I fully accepted it. But somehow I knew it all along. The tumor taught me many things, some of which I will address here in later posts, but the first thing I learned is that my own intuition, whether squished by tumor or not, is a powerful tool. It quietly prepared me for what should have been the most frightening event in my life, allowing me the time to prepare mentally so that I would not despair.
I like to think that I faced Matilda with grace and with a constant smile. And I did it, not because I possess a ton of grace, or because I was happy about the tumor, but because I already knew it was coming. Somehow I just knew.
I take a different approach to the blogging hobby than others do. While some do it for income and others do it to share their knowledge, I do it for me. And I do it somewhat unconventionally. There are writers out there who work hard at their craft, writing draft after draft, scrutinizing every word for maximum impact, and only publishing for public consumption once they feel confident that it is the best version it can be.
Yeah, that’s not me.
My approach to this blog is more like: Ready, FIRE, Aim. I think it, I write it, and I publish it. In that order and without a lot of fanfare we like to call proof reading. Not that there isn't merit to the writing process as it should be, because there definitely is. Were this an academic paper or a piece being submitted to a publisher I would be sure to follow a writing process that included much more time, thought and corrections. But, for me right now, the purpose of this blog is not to show you that I know how to avoid unacceptable comma splices or that I am capable of weaving words into poetic strands that leave you imagining yourself in fields of overgrown, fragrant poppies, riding your pet unicorn to the end of the nearest rainbow.
Again, that’s not me.
The purpose of this blog is for me to feel, to write about, and to share all of those raw emotions that happen within me as I travel this journey of earthly life. The purpose is for me to create a method for dealing with what happens to me and within me in a way that leaves no exit strategy. If it is important enough for me to feel it strongly enough for me to write it, I am going to write it honestly. I am going to write it quickly and publish it quickly so that the process of proofing and correcting does not blemish the rawness and truth of that which I have chosen to write. In this way I can be sure that there is evidence of what was felt before time and rational thought had a chance to go to work.
It is also a way to ensure that my life-long habit of being a ruminator is thwarted almost immediately. I spent years of my life using my brain for the pointless process of ruminating. And it is a process that I have worked hard over the past few years to squash. Not that there aren't times that I wish I had said more, or said less, or said something more eloquent, or said anything at all. And there are times when I re-read a blog post and know that if I had structured a certain sentence differently, the impact could have been greater. Or if I had chosen different words the readability would have been better.
I am okay with the imperfections that will be found here because it is intended to be an extension of my imperfect self. I am not looking to achieve an excellent grade or to win a prize with what is written here. I am looking to achieve honesty and to be as human as I can be, comma splices and all. Ruminating in any form is a wasteful and pointless process and you will not catch me sitting at the keyboard wasting time in it.
Until, of course, there is a book deal on the table. Then I will proof read. I promise.
