Okay, so. After spending 57.4% of my life in school, I discover that I love being at home with my daughter. (Which isn’t really ‘at home,’ of course — it’s being a classroom parent, a snack parent, a ballet assistant, a YMCA volunteer…)
The universe has a perverse sense of humor.
Jealous? HELL YEAH.
My father gave my brother a restaurant for Christmas. Now, my father isn’t a magnate. He’s a veterinarian. My brother is 27 years old. He hasn’t finished undergrad. He’s never owned a car, a house, or anything more complicated than an Iphone. He’s sweet-natured, friendly, delightful — and I love him, across the decades, miles, and other obstacles that remind us we have absolutely nothing in common except a father.
Our dad, who took the loan on an ailing Italian restaurant and transferred it to my brother’s name, is showing as much of himself here as anyone else. He’s retired, married to a woman who could take him or leave him and tells him so, comfortably well off, bored, and scared to death of being alone. Living vicariously.
So… damn. It’s hard to be a grown-up. It’s hard to feel jealousy where it doesn’t belong… am I envious of his youth, his freedoms, his access to our father? Um, yes.
One of the most powerful lessons recovery has taught me is that everyone has successes and trials, and the external often doesn’t map onto the internal. The surgeon who just pulled up in his Porsche? May be so lonely he’ll take the long road home so he can pass by more liquor stores. The stay-at-home mom who never misses a soccer game? May feel so anxious that she is hiding a pharmacy of medications in her pocket.
So, no one’s given me a restaurant lately, but no matter. I can honestly say I have been given gifts of much greater value. My needs this year have been the internal kind, and they have been more than met. All the restaurants in the world would have done me no good. I am lucky.
I’ll send up prayers for my brother’s success. I’ll feel little pangs of jealousy for what they are: little pangs. That I can get over. Quickly. I’ll take my focus by the reins and guide it, instead of letting it drive me. I’ll recognize that our 70-year-old father could be ill, infirm, or gone. I’ll be grateful that he is well and able to buy a restaurant.
My father just bought a restaurant.
And gave it to my brother for Christmas.
((gggrrr))
Filed under: daybreaker, Life on Life's Terms, NaBloPoMo, Recovery is hard
…but not quite yet. We don’t know each other well enough and, frankly, I’m afraid of what you will think of me. Put another way: I think I know what you will think of me, and I am afraid I could not handle that.
Yesterday, I found a note in my toiletries bag. I “heart” you, B-Day Girl! was scribbled on a piece of hotel notepaper, the kind they stick under the phone. My heart recognized the note first, and my stomach took a flip. Then my head caught up and I broke out in a cold sweat.
Last year on my birthday, I was with someone I loved and who loved me. Perhaps this last wasn’t quite true, but I fully believed it — so it was my reality. And I was happy. Content with my vision for the future, with Mimi, love, my career, a lovely home, and liberal doses of family and friends.
At the time, I didn’t have a single one of those things, not really. I was clinging to each by a gossamer thread, begging the wind to not blow too hard and pull it all apart.
Of course, it did. Three months later, my marriage was in shambles; my career destroyed; my home — well, I was living in the hospital by then; my daughter was with my sister, separated from both me and her father; my only contact with family was on one of the two phones made available during three tightly controlled periods a week; friends — none; and my love?
Let’s just say, for the moment: things had changed greatly from when he’d written my birthday note.
I’m not sure why I found the note yesterday, the day before the last day of the last year of the decade. This is the decade for which I can probably count the number of nights I went to sleep without a sedative on two hands. The days, in the last few years, don’t number many more than that. So it is safe to say that it was much easier to feel happy and content… or “happy” and “content” — before this past May.
For right now, it’s enough to know I handled finding that note without drugs or alcohol. And even more: I know there won’t be anymore notes like that, notes with sweet words tethered to nothing.
All things diaper/pull up/whatever related. And potty training. And NOT potty training.
I am caught in potty training limbo. She was on a good path, she really was, until I got pneumonia. Then she slid all the way back to first base. Make that all the way back to the dugout. Pediatricians and psychologists and preschool teachers and veteran moms were consulted. All relayed the same two bits of information: don’t push her — she’ll get it when she’s ready, and rewards work better than sanctions.
Okay then.
But seriously, luv, come ON.
In August 2007, Jon and I travelled from Moscow to Tempe with our new daughter. My most vivid memory of that time is the careful way Jon bore Mimi in an infant carrier strapped to his chest. His hands were striking to me — so capable and confident, and yet so gentle.
That is also the trip that introduced me to the insanity that is airplane bathrooms without baby changing stations. Yes, they exist, who knew, and I think I have since flown on every plane so built. Apparently they’re common. So imagine the three of us, at least two of whom were crying loudly, crammed in an airplane loo balancing a squirmy baby and trying to avoid the very, very messy diaper flying around the tight space.
Then I was the one crying the second week of our current trip to Florida, when Mimi had another messy, messy diaper in the frozen foods aisle and I had not brought enough supplies so I had to… let’s just say I was unable to leave the ladies’ room in better condition than how I found it. Ever since that day, Mimi will look at me worriedly when I ask about her diaper and say, “Don’t be sad.” That’s usually how I know the state of things these days.
Sometimes I remember everything. Sometimes I don’t. It’s not quite like the days when we were surrounded by other moms and someone in the crowd was guaranteed to have supplies if someone else didn’t. There are days when I tuck and shove her pull-up into her clothing because she doesn’t want it to show. And, unfortunately, sometimes it’s me who doesn’t want it to show. Although the time the 4-year-old in the public bathroom peeked under the stall and exclaimed, “She’s wearing a pull-up!” I did summon enough Mommy Bear to snarl, “Yeah? And what of it?”
So, yesterday on the bus for the day-long tour of Kennedy Space Center, there were about 50 fellow tourists huddling either in anticipation of the ride or grateful to be out of the chilly rain. Mimi and I, after a triumphant visit to the ladies’, boarded last. She announced to all and sundry: ”I just pooped in the potty so I get a marshmallow!”
Silence. Then a voice from the depths of the bus: “Does she get a marshmallow now?”
Of course. They’re in my purse. I’ll be carrying them until she leaves for college.
Filed under: daymaker, Florida, Holidays, Mimi, NaBloPoMo, Parenting is fun
we’re at the beach for the holidays…
snow is iffy, but you can always count on sand
and if there is anything more beautiful than children at play on a beach
I’m pretty sure…
that I have never encountered it
This is where I draw some connection to a recovery concept, such as ‘progress not perfection’, in order to illustrate how I feel about not keeping up with NaBloPoMo. Can’t think of one, so I’ll just spit it out there. I couldn’t do it. No 30-days-in-30-posts. I meant to; I should have thought more closely about the timing. I chose, instead of meeting this goal, to give my attention fully to the happy busyness of the holiday season, spent blissfully among the family I miss all year long. So it goes. A lesson learned (I’ll target November next year), a strategy planned (I’ll still hit 30 posts in 30 days — just not consecutive days), gifts appreciated (I am loving the connections I’m making through NaBloPoMo), and status accepted. I’ll be clearer in my intent next year. For now this is good enough.
Oh, man, am I tired of potty training. It seemed on track for a few weeks at mom’s, and then as soon as I got sick and didn’t keep up with asking her every five minutes if she needed to go, she slid all the way back to square one. Now she NEVER goes in the toilet unless I ask, and asking a child every five minutes for MONTHS is sooooo tedious.
She could not care less about it. Seriously. She isn’t embarrassed, concerned, irritated… anything. Her logic at least is sound: with these handy pull-ups, who needs to bother stopping and going to the bathroom? Perfect solution. This and a cell phone and my independence is set.
Strangely, her favorite video now is The Nutcracker. She’ll tolerate the Barbie version, but prefers the Royal Ballet. Seriously. We watch it several times a day. She narrates — making sure to warn me before the scary mice appear — and dances all over the room.
So this afternoon we were shopping and I was comparing pull-ups and she pipes up: “Bum bumbumbumbumbum BUM bum bum … Bum bumbumbumbumbum BUM bum bum … “
I’d recognize that tune anywhere: the March of the Toy Soldiers.
The solstices are my two favorite days of the year. They’re quiet favorites, usually passing without great celebration or notice. I just like them. The longest and the shortest; one day when dark nearly takes over the light, and one day when the sun stretches deep into the night.
I noticed again today. Didn’t do anything. Just noticed.
She’s sleeping, so quietly and so peacefully. A candle is lit. The fan is turning slowly and soft jazz is playing on her lullaby tape.
They’re in the living room, enjoying drinks. When we all together in the living room in the early evening, they sit on couches with crossed knees and grown-up laughter, while she and I roll around on the floor and spill our water.
Then we eat our supper at the kitchen table. There is some overlap as they get their suppers ready to carry into the dining room.
She and I shuttle off to the bathroom, her into the tub and me to sit close by and keep watch. It is a quiet together-and-not time, as she plays with her toys and I skim a magazine. She often sings to herself, nonsense rhythms in her lilting voice.
We go to bed in our room. She always calls it “mama’s room,” but it’s every bit ours. I remind her of this several times a day and she says, “Okay, mama.”
We read storybooks and hear them talking. It reminds me of times when I was young and my sisters and I would gather on the bedrooms side of the door listening to the adults in the living room at their party. Tinkling, light, happy sounds.
And now? I need to get my head back right. I want to join them at drinks, it is true. It should help, should make me feel powerful and strong, to remind myself that this is a choice I am making, a decision of mine, not theirs, that they are in no way bound.
After all, do I slow down my eating when a tablemate announces she is on a diet? No.
So why do I feel so separate from them?
This magic first night of winter. It appreciates a little more childlike wonder, doesn’t it?
