Oh Elll Dee

So I sit there, with my feet dangling over the edge of the exam table, clutching my paper of current conditions and medications, wearing the little transparent "dress" that hospitals apparently feel preserves your modesty.    I skimmed the sheet again and thought "This can't be right!"  At the bottom of the page, as a footer, were my stats.  "Age; 41"  It really caught me once again how big that number looks and feels and how little it corresponds with my brain.  I no longer know what age I think I am, but even on a rough day, 41 doesn't feel like it belongs to me.  It's my parents, or my parent's friends, but not me.

When I look at photos of my parents in their forties, they are accompanied by nearly adult children.  When I look at pictures of my husband and I, we have a kindergartner and a toddler.  In the photo, they are so close to having an adult life again, and me?  Not so much.  And when Sister Little says "Mama, you my best fwend." it all feels like the right and true thing, but there are days, long and painful days when I want to lie down and cry with the "18 more years of this, really?" of it all.

And now a new doctor to meet.  Break in. Break down in front of.  Become vulnerable to.  I swear that all of them are starting to look like they should be babysitting my children and that makes me feel capital-Oh Ell Dee.  Please, please, please, let this doctor be gentle with my fragile and wobbly ego.

And you know what?  I love my new doctor.  She's real.  She's funny and and just the right amount of sarcastic.  She tells the truth.  She puts me in the driver's seat of decisions about my body.  She laughed at her own advice to up my planned exercise to five sessions weekly, eat more vegetables and drink less coffee, and to get more rest.  She gets it.  She heard me say, "I last slept through the night in 2001".  She looked at my enormous tonsils and busted a totally inappropriate joke, which still makes me chuckle.  And she's only a little older than I am.

This "forties" thing is a roller coaster for me.  On one hand, I'm a whole lot freer than I've ever been.  I know who I am with more clarity and I know what I'm willing to spend my time on and what just isn't worth it anymore.     But I'm also in that place of wanting to make a difference and I feel that I don't even have time to make a dent.  My own developmental needs are not matching up to my external reality.    I want time to lay on the floor with my babies and play games, and I also want my house to myself to lay in quiet and do nothing.  I want to make a difference, and I want to be liked, but I don't want to play the games anymore.

But I think I am in the throes of midlife crisis.   I miss my college self, and the times I missed  doing the ridiculous things because I was too serious, or too shy.  I miss my twenty something self that felt like time was passing me by and my real adult life needed to start "Right Now!"  (I kind of want to go back and kick her in the pants, and shake some sense into her.  You don't know how good you had it sister.)  And I want to remind that girl at twenty, and thirty and even thirty-five not to rush.  Decisions are big and their reach is far.  A paycheck is necessary, but not guaranteed happiness.  A relationship is comforting, but not necessarily security.   Friends are important, but not always life-long.  And to a lesser degree, dessert is divine, but for the love of romaine, salad is important too.

When one of my parents turned forty, a sibling reported that his forties were the decade when everything began to fall apart.  Let me assemble the evidence:  I now make the same groaning noise I ridiculed my parents for when I get up in the morning.  Something in my back or neck is not happy.  I can't drink coffee in the evening if I want to sleep this week.  Goodbye espresso for dessert circa 1994.   I now hold medicine bottles at an angle and distance that are appropriate when playing trombone, but somewhat humbling in the pharmacy.  And laser surgery for my eyes is now out.  I'm at "the age" where, while they could correct my distance vision, my eyes are changing rapidly enough, that my close vision is going to keep me in lenses.  And when I fall now, it hurts.

Take this week, I came home from work to find our aging dog had not been able to make the day indoors without accident.  This is new for us.  And while I found evidence sample one and two, I did not see exhibit three.  Fortunately I had shoes.  Unfortunately, they were clogs.  I shot across the floor in a near standing position before my speed dropped and so did I, falling in nine directions simultaneously.  My new reality is apparently such that I had to evaluate if the snapping sound I heard was my ankle or something now lying under me in my new, prone, besmirched, and aching vantage point.  Fortunately it was a crayon and not a skeletal unit, but when did my brain make this switch?  Who gave the sign?

So, I'm not really complaining, because being 41 certainly beats the alternative of not being 41, but I have this amnesia-quality recollection of how I got here so quickly.  And regret that I can't go back and do some things over.  I think I would be smarter and more observant if given the chance.  I certainly would have turned on a light before going into the family room last Friday night ;)

In My Hands

 "The final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands."- Anne Frank

Hands tell a story.  My family comes from farming roots.  My great grandmother had worn her fingerprints away by the time she she was an adult and could not be fingerprinted for entry into the country.  My grandmother's hands were  marked with the signs of gardening, canning, and a lifetime of hard work.  My mother's hands were one step removed, still hardworking, but less likely to show the toil of subsistence farming, and more likely to be marked, at various times in her life, with ink from grading papers, paper-cuts from filing documents, stains from prepping produce for market, and nicks and scratches from working with scissors and pins.

My story starts here.  I was in third grade when my mother began to have me help her in the kitchen.  Usually tasks like peeling carrots and dicing celery.  I vividly recall laying my head on my desk during homework later and realizing that my hands still smelled like chopped vegetables.  More importantly, they smelled like my mother and my grandmother.  I had taken my place among the women of my family.   A rite of passage  sounds grandiose, but for me,  it was the first time I could put words around the comforting smell that I knew from my grandmother and my mother's presence when I was sick and needed soothing, or troubled and needed calming, or just needed to be grounded with being here.  The perfume of my family is in carrots and celery and onions.  Years later, watching cooking shows, I would hear that this trio had a culinary name; mirepoix.  All I knew was that it smelled like home, and love, and safe.

What story do my hands tell?  Certainly a more comfortable life than that of my family before me. Don't get me wrong, I have had my share of hard work, but more in the form of summer employment, or brief, in-transition, jobs.  There was the summer when my hands reflected a three-month stint gardening for an exacting home-owner whom liked her grass edges trimmed by hand, with scissors.  All eighteen garden beds.  Weekly.  (Which was about the time it took for garden one to be in need of a trim by the time I had worked my way through bed eighteen.)

There is the year that I worked in a video rental department within a grocery store.  One that held a movie-theater style popcorn machine.   A machine that required the repeated melting of a waxen block of solid fats and chemicals masquerading as buttery topping.  I could not load that pan without inadvertently hitting my hand on the lid, raging hot and grease-covered.  Which frequently led to cursing that I hoped was masked by the now rotating metal blade and  popping of the  and oil-covered dry kernels.

There are the years where my hands were covered with ink, and paper-cuts, and fingernails bitten to the quick.  Hands chapped and dry from frigid winds blowing across lakes in between unyielding brick buildings.  Fingernails caked in clay, and play-dough, crayons, and oobleck as I finished my degree, working and training in a lab school setting.

My hands will tell you very little about my life these days.  My career leaves more imprints on my heart than my hands. And yet, if you come close, and let me hold your hand, you might find that my signature scent is more mirepoix than Chanel.  Some things are simply deeply written in familial code and while I am no longer reliant on my ability to sow, grow and hoe my sustenance, I still find comfort in using my hands to feed my family; their body, senses, and soul.

Now it is time for me to prepare another page in the chapter that is my "right now".  Carrots are to be peeled by Sister Middle, and Sister Big has knife skills that are on the cusp of being independent.  And perhaps tonight, as they drift to sleep, they will also notice the connection that holds their hands with those of their family across time.

Calling All Book-Lovers

When I was little, some of my favorite memories are of sitting tucked between the wood stove and the adjacent cabinetry wall, back against the brick facing reading page after page of a good book.  Failing that, I would make a air-capturing, furnace-defeating tent over the air grate using an afghan knit by my mother, reading page after page of a good book.  I read in the car, on the couch, on the school bus, anywhere I could.  I have burned out more flashlights and booklights than you can number over the years.  All in the pursuit of a next really good book.  A transport to another time, place, feeling.

As a child and later, a teen, I remember hearing my mother say she loved to read, but could never find the time; by the time she dropped into bed she had barely read one page before the book rudely fell against her face, startling her awake.  At the time I pitied her, but couldn't comprehend.  Now, I get it.  I really want those days back when I could lounge somewhere, anywhere, reading as long as I wanted uninterrupted.  Guilt-free.  It's not that I can't carve time to read, it is just that it comes at a cost somewhere else, and the price is high.  I can read, but that means my kids are in front of the tv.  I can read, but I'm not spending time with my husband.  I can read, but the house is not getting any cleaner.  And so, dedicated reading time has become the bastion of sick days and middle of the night.  Somewhere in my brain, reading has been categorized as a luxury, or somehow illicit.  And like any addict, I don't function without it.

Last year, Mr. Unscripted recognized this and gave me an e-reader.  At first, I was excited but cautiously so.  You see, I love the sensorial aspects of turning a real, paper and ink book.  I love the whisper of pages turning, the musty smell that is only the domain of aging books, and even the varying look and feel of pages of a closed book, smooth or staggered-cut; rough toothed or satin smooth pages. I am the girl who reads what type the book is set in and the history that goes with it.   I like the heft of a book in my hand and the visual demarcation of progress as the pages remaining join their earlier compatriots on the left side of my vision.

I did not expect to fall for the technology of the reader.  But soon I knew that I loved being able to see the percentage of the book left as a tangible number.  I fell in love with the ability to tap a word and get the definition immediately without rising from my comfy spot, thereby alerting the children that Mama was having some grown-up time unsupervised.  (And I love words.  I love collecting them, using them, knowing them.  This was a previously unknown luxury.  Words on demand, my people.)

And I loved the ability to highlight a beautiful turn of phrase and save it indefinitely.  I always had a journal of phrases and descriptions copied down in the past, and while I loved it, this is so much easier and immediately gratifying.  And it's all in one, slim, go-anywhere package.  And for the speed with which I was able to pull this up and share it with a fellow book-lover, anywhere.  And this is where I really fell hook, line, and sinker.  For as much as I love books, I have a horrible ability to summarize them for someone wanting to know what to read next.  I never have to struggle for the title, author or summary.  I can just open and scroll through.  My entire book history, (almost), at my fingertips.  And yours too, for the asking.

Recently, Sister Big has started to resist reading.  This has been the equivalent of the eldest son refusing to take on the family business.  And initially, I did all the wrong things.  I insisted, I withheld privileges, and I (shamefully) tried guilting her into reading more.   And then a wise local librarian verbally grabbed me by my collar and shook some sense into me.  Show your love of reading, she urged me.  Carve out time and read, chuckle out loud, gasp audibly, let them know that you can't put the book down because it is just that good.  In essence, stop treating reading as something to sneak in between other things, and return it to a place of honor and priority.  And, stop sugarcoating the reading material.  Let her read something that is just a little bit scary or bold.  Let her feel the feels.

And you know what, she is "sneaking" that book to bed with a flashlight now,  trying to finish it before I can.  No longer waiting for me to read it to her, or with her, she is finding her own reading nest, and carving out that sense of illicit reading wonder.  And I for one, pretend not to see the bobbing flashlight as she tries to read one more page without falling asleep.  As for me, my house is never "House Beautiful" quality, and lately it is even less so, but life is short and I for one have over five hundred books on my to-read list.  The floors can wait.

Forever-There

I was blessed to grow up in a small town, with a tight-knit community.  Our parents were both ours alone, and part of the collective town-parent.  How many town meetings, school plays, birthday parties, graduations, did we share?  Beyond any accurate count, it is just part of the fabric of my childhood.  When I think of my hometown, my school, my growing-up, there are a solid handful of faces that stand with my own parents.  Tonight was a goodbye to one of those forever-there faces.

Tonight I stood beside a friend I have known for all but the first five years of my life and we cried together.   I stood there because I needed to say words that could not take away her pain, and to let her know that I see her sadness. I hugged her twice because once didn't say it all and marveled at her grace under such trying circumstances.  Her beautiful daughter stood beside her, taking loving care of her, straddling the divide between child and young adult from moment to moment. It was beautiful and emotional and so very, very real.

 It struck me with full force that we have stopped being the children and become the parents, the ones who begin to say goodbyes we are not ready for; To our own parents that we still think of as invincible. "Wait! We are the children!" our brains cry out, but time has silently moved on, leaving us with roles we haven't asked for.  

This father leaves a legacy of strong, hard-working, caring children.  Women I was proud to grow up with.  Women I am still proud to know.  Women I wish I had hugged just one more time tonight to let them know how much I wish them peace.

Serenity Now

The holiday season is fading into a distant memory and my family worked our little selves into a frenzy trying to do all of the things that we "should" in order to have a happy holiday, before we came to our collective senses.  We needed to get some perspective.  We needed that Seinfeldian mantra of "Serenity Now!"   We needed to find some room to breathe and we needed to believe, truly believe, in "enough".

Enough #1: My favorite sugar cookie recipe is a health disaster.  I briefly thought about skipping it, and then realized that somewhere in the primitive reptilian brain there is a code that reads "Santa+ Sugar cookies= Christmas".  I had to do it.  I briefly considered making them with alternative ingredients, but in the end went old school, unfurled my parchment paper and cut those babies out.  The kids were excited about cutting them out, but really what made them spin in dervishes of Christmas ecstasy was the idea that there would be frosting.  So, cutting to the chase, the cookies are cooled and ready to be decorated, and the frosting is whizzing around the  mixer when I realize it is not getting "redder" because I am adding pink frosting gel, (which in its concentrated form is red by the way).  Adding the correct gel only served to make the frosting the day-glo orangey red found in playdough factories.  The Martha Stewart Living part of my brain wanted to pitch them out and start again.  Perfection please!  Instead I pitched a whiny fit, got it together again, and we went with a very contemporary color scheme that went with absolutely nothing, but if you closed your eyes and wore sunglasses simultaneously, tasted like Christmas.  Enough craziness, Christmas is not a color.

Enough #2: Present shopping.  We very intentionally scaled back this year, and yet as we wrapped the significantly smaller pile of goods, the same cerebral reptile chanted, "...But where's the rest of it?"  It took significant tough love in alternating rounds to keep both parents on board with meaningful gifts and not teeming heaps of "stuff".  We stayed small, (and truthfully could have gone smaller), and it was enough.  In fact, Little One was finished after one, initial present and not everything was opened under the tree.  Gifts this year were centered on things the girls are interested in right now, and things we can do together.  And unlike other years, nothing is broken or lost as vacation comes to an end.  Enough is a small thing.  Enough is a quality thing.  Enough is sustainable.

Enough #3:  Enough is also a stopping point, a reflection point, and a starting point.  New Year resolutions kill me slowly each year as I start out strong and slide into ambivalence as my goals were too lofty, far-flung, numerous, etc.  I've had enough of setting myself up with "not good enough..have to be better..." pledges.  This year, I am going to be gentle enough with myself that I could treat my friends in the same fashion.  There is no one in the world to whom I would say the harsh and critical things that cycle through my brain day after day.   And now, they are not welcome here either.  Enough is enough.  I have to practice, but I am enough for me.

And finally, Enough #4:  Each day is enough in its own right.  I don't know how yet, but I plan to live the day, not the week, month, season, or year.  I have some thoughts, some feelings about what might be the right way for me, but for now, it is enough to know that today I felt today.  I was here.  It was enough to draw with my girls and clean the pantry, and find a missing slipper.  I will get the thank you notes written, but maybe not today.  I will get a walk in, but maybe not right this minute.  My littles are only little for a short time.  My last day of vacation will be up in a few short hours.  This time is what I have, and it is enough.

And so, from day-glo frosting to being in the moment, I hope your holidays were joyful, your moments gentle, and your time was enough.  Happy 2016 my friends.  May it be all that you hope for and enough of what you need.  Much love.