Sweet Hearts

My dad was my first Valentine. He was that strong, handsome, home-by-five provider that typified suburban 1960s life. I remember the years he worked a night job at a local country club – on holidays like New Year’s and Valentine’s Day there would be fancy, celebrity-filled parties – Lucille Ball, Jack Lemmon, Count Basie – these were the A-listers of my parent’s generation, and my dad served them all. On those nights I’d try to wait up for him because he’d always come home with great stories of who was the best (or worst) tipper, and he’d bring bags of leftovers and party favors: gourmet finger sandwiches, frosted tea cakes, pink and red balloons, streamers and more.

When I was older, February 14th was always celebrated with heart shaped boxes of candy. One for me, one for my mother, my daddy’s “girls.” Long before I dreamed of boys, I knew there was one man in my life who would never forget his Valentine. The tradition continued until I left for college, a relief I think since my taste in chocolate had gotten expensive by then. Dad had gone from grabbing $12 boxes of Whitman’s Samplers at the five and dime to waiting on line to shell out $25 for Godiva truffles, my favorite. Not that he ever complained.

I just ordered flowers for my parents for Valentine’s Day, and as I addressed the card, there were many things I wanted to tell my dad about my recent reflections, but couldn’t. The dementia that has stolen both his personality and our personal history leaves me no common ground on which to build a conversation, share an anecdote, or even reminisce. He will never remember our Valentine tradition since he will never again quite understand what this holiday of hearts and flowers and candy even signifies.

So I wrote this blog to say thanks to my dad, for showing me what romance should be: sweet, thoughtful, tender. A man of few words, my dad maintained traditions of love and loyalty that spoke volumes.

If you are loved by your father, you are blessed indeed. Happy Valentine’s Day, Daddy. I miss you so much.

Melting Down

While on vacation over the New Year’s holiday, my seven-year old daughter experienced the mother of all meltdowns. As I learned later, it started as squabble with her older brother that left her feeling angry and misunderstood. Not wanting to be labeled a tattle, she chose to sideline herself as her brother and friends continued to play, seemingly oblivious to her self-imposed absence. Watching them laugh and joke without her only added to her frustration, and after festering in a stew of toxic emotions for twenty minutes or more, she finally just lost it.

It began as a low moaning whine and built into a crying jag jarring enough to raise the dead. Loud, relentless and borderline hysterical, she refused to be comforted. Hugs, threats, teasing, tickles and the tested and true “ignore her until she stops” technique all failed to halt the emotional tidal wave wracking her small body. Eventually we had her lie down to finish crying it out, and exhaustion quickly took over. She slept for three hours.

I’m not new to parenting and am well aware that tantrums come with the territory. But this experience caught me off guard. My daughter was not just unreasonable. She was unreachable, lost someplace inside herself we couldn’t seem to access. As I puzzled about her behavior, in a flash of insight I understood that while her uncontrollable crying was triggered by events of the day, the depth of her distress was rooted in experiences that occurred years earlier. An adopted foster child, she has already experienced more loss in her short life than I am ever likely to know. As a result, she’s been known to personalize even the slightest criticism, experiencing correction as rejection. And although maturity has tempered her tendency to overreact, she still has her moments.

Watching her sleep, all puffy eyed and flushed, I longed to take the brunt of the blows she’s been dealt. Kissing her still wet cheeks, I add my own tears to hers, heavy with the knowledge that I will never be enough of a mother to replace the one she’s lost. There is a hole in her heart my love can bandage but not mend. Then I do what I always do: I give her to God, healer of broken hearts, and ask Him to help my little girl sense the comfort of His arms around her. And I pray He helps me parent her with compassion and understanding. Especially when I don’t know how.

Today as I was putting on my makeup, I suddenly caught a glimpse of my own mother’s face staring back at me from the mirror. It’s an unsettling phenomenon that happens more and more frequently as I age. Then I realized with a start that my daughter is likely experiencing a similar phenomenon when she looks in the mirror. Her enviably high cheekbones, coffee-hued skin and luminous black eyes surely echo the face of the woman who carried her to term. I suspect this realization haunts her, since it's a face she has never actually seen outside of her dreams. When she was very young, she'd tug my arm in restaurants and stores, pointing to strangers and whispering, "Is that my real mom? Look - she's brown like me."

So I give her extra hugs. When she complains and frets, I do my best to console. And when all is said and done, I take to my room, close the door and have a meltdown of my own.

I can’t carry her pain. But I can follow her example and simply cry it out.

Untamed Heart

Fellow mom blogger Kyran Pittman penned a post recently that resonated with me. Her fabulous Notes to Self blog is my new favorite, and in it she offered a sneak-peak excerpt from her upcoming memoir. To read the full excerpt I encourage you to go to her blog, but the jist of it was that inside every honest woman there resides “a creature that can’t be domesticated.” I love that line and have pondered its meaning in recent weeks.

After 18 years of mostly happy marriage, a successful writing career, two kids, one dog, two consecutive suburban homes, a sensible sedan and several SUVs, sometimes I still wake up in the night panicked, wondering if my life has purpose. The security I spent years chasing down seems suffocating at 3 a.m., and that’s usually when I feel it stir, the seed of something I dare not feed or water. It’s a violent urge, this desire to shatter the wife and mommy mold I’ve strapped myself into so that the woman I lost along the way can claw her way back out.

As Kyran so eloquently says, this creature in each of us is restless and untamed. Like all wild things, it has an inclination to roam, a feral desire for danger, and a limited ability to form attachments – it will not be tied down. This creature, whoever she is, would not play nice at PTA meetings or bake brownies for Bible study. Nor would she even consider spending precious down time trolling recipe websites for 20-minute weeknight meals. She is Thelma and Louise. She is Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. She’s the maneater Darryl Hall warned young men about, the one who only comes out at night.

Discontent is an elusive emotion. It’s rarely biting enough to spur change, yet it nags like a hungry child, whining incessantly but never satisfied with the very thing it demands.

My husband is not immune to these restless musings. We joke about quitting our day jobs, running off to Mexico and opening a taco stand. Pulling the kids out of school and traipsing around Europe for a year. Or moving to the mission field and living on faith and donations. But then he laughs, sets the alarm, and sleeps like a baby, while I stare at the ceiling and wonder how I will do this – live this life I’ve chosen – for the next 25 or so years.

But come morning, the creature slinks back to its cage. Routine relegate discontent to a dim corner of my consciousness I will not have time revisit any time soon. As I rush the kids out the door in a flurry of backpacks and briefcases, my “to do” list already dictating my day, I pause, suddenly aware of a low but steady purring, seemingly announcing the approach of a very large cat. I look around, expectant.

“Mom – you got new messages on your Blackberry!” my son shouts behind me, and I turn to see him scrolling the screen, fascinated with technology as only an 11-year old can be. I take the droning device from him and turn it off. Then I slide into my leased SUV, whisk out the driveway of my expansive corner lot, and chauffeur my kids to their pricey private school. Next it’s off to work, where I will spend the next eight hours earning nearly enough money to pay for the various trappings of my middle class life.

I do what I do to keep what I have. Like it or not.

Don't I Know You From Somewhere?

Imagine a place where every disparate segment of your life collides. In this alternate universe you can spend quality time with people from your past, your present and possibly even your future. Your ninth grade nemesis is there. So is your first crush. Your high school prom date is chatting with the guy who dumped you for your (former) best friend. Your husband and your ex are chumming around too, bonding over music trivia.

Your old boss has shown up, and frighteningly, so has your current boss, along with a whole posse of girlfriends – college roomates, bridesmaids, work friends and PTA pals. Your pastor has dropped in, oh, and just for good measure, some of your crazy relatives did too: first, second, even third cousins and their kids. These people have no common interests and no real desire to get to know each other. Their sole purpose for being here is the fact that they have (or had) some kind of relationship with you. The problem is most of them know WAY to much about you (I mean, who introduces their Bible study friends to their drug buddies from back in the day?) Naturally, there are all kinds of alarms are going off in your head since clearly these people should NOT be mingling. But it’s too late. Even if you leave now, everyone will still be here when you get back. Watching. Waiting. Posting. Tagging.

Welcome to the very weird world of Facebook.

I just got a friend request from someone whose name was only vaguely familiar. Her picture offered no clues, but since she knew me by my maiden name I assumed it was a legit request and not some MLM team building scheme. I accepted. Turns out she and I were buds back in junior high – 7th grade according to her. A mere 36 years ago. She gushed that she was so excited to “find” me (really? She looked?) She assumed I remembered her – I’m still not sure I do, but I’m playing along. She wants to know what I’ve been up to. So… how exactly do you tell someone what you’ve been doing since you were 13? Who remembers? And why would you even want to? There’s a reason nobody goes to junior high reunions.

Of course now I’m in a junior high school friending freefall because accepting a friend request from one former acquaintance now opens you up to everyone else on their FB page – people who may also think they remember you from somewhere. I’ve already had two more requests from people I can’t place. It’s the “If you give a pig a pancake” rule of social networking.
Used to be there were old friends, former friends and new friends. This new category of FB friends has me baffled, because here the old become the new, former become the current, and nobody ever drops off the rolodex.

So where do you draw the line at ignoring people and hoping they just go back into the once closed door of your past where they belong? Is it rude to simply not respond to friendship requests on FB? Or is there a polite way to say “thanks…but no thanks.”

Judgment Call

I recently read a blog by Irene Vilar, a self-described “abortion addict.” Irene had 15 abortions in 16 years, but today has two young children – she claims finally yielding to motherhood saved her from the cycle of habitual pregnancy termination. She also admits getting pregnant with the intent to abort – often waiting until the second term of pregnancy to end it. Her blog promotes her recently published memoir entitled Impossible Motherhood, which cites among other things, a background of neglect and abandonment that led her to end more than a dozen pregnancies. Her tone is one of measured remorse; she’s sorry, but it’s not her fault.

Whenever I read controversial pieces, I’m always eager to see how people weigh in. Many read this blog and expressed feelings of sadness, outrage and disgust. Others extended compassion and understanding. Some politicized and still others proselytized. Not surprisingly, quite a few people were harshly critical. But what struck me was the number of people who were quick to label anyone judgmental who dared question this woman’s choices. In response to one particularly caustic comment, one irate reader ranted: “Who are YOU to judge HER?” It’s a fair question.

As a Christian I know all about withholding the first stone. I’ve made some very poor choices of my own, including two abortions – one in high school and a second in college. Am I morally superior to Irene Vilar because her aborted children outnumber mine? Of course not. Some will of course argue that abortion is not a moral issue to begin with; I’ll table that for another discussion. What I’m wondering though, is when did it become virtually impossible to criticize someone or something without having the “J” word hurled your way? Frankly, in this case, I think if you put yourself out there and write a book about unconventional behavior, you are asking for reactions. Reactions do, after all, sell books.

I’m not purchasing the book but I do have a reaction. I find it abusive and irresponsible to abort for sport. To purposefully skip your birth control pills (which Irene says she did repeatedly to rebel against a domineering husband) is reckless and foolish. I also think describing abortion as an addiction minimizes the very real problems that afflict millions of people – dependence on drugs, alcohol and other destructive substances and behaviors. That Irene felt empowered killing babies she says she intentionally conceived is more mental illness than addiction. That she will now parlay her troubled past into talk show appearances and an income stream is akin to taking blood money.

True, I have never met Irene and did not read her book, so I’m ill-equipped to comment on the whole of her life circumstances. I can draw conclusion only from the facts provided: her pregnancies occurred primarily in the confines of a marriage to a man who did not want children. But he did not force her to abort; she never told him about the pregnancies.

For her part, Irene blames her choices on a “hypersexualized society that at once values the perfect mother, but also expects women to be sexually attractive to men and to achieve professionally.”

So it is society’s fault she had 15 abortions. A society that unfairly made her choose between her sexuality, her career, her marriage and her unborn children. Given her current age of 40, the timeline for these archaic ideas she felt beholden to was around the mid-80s through late 90s, so I can’t say I’m buying that idea. But if you want to play the blame game, then you are essentially admitting there is blame to be assigned.

15 children died at this woman’s whim – that’s more than half of your average kindergarten class, just to give some perspective. Who bears the burden of guilt here is not for me to decide, but I do have an opinion about it. And I don’t think that makes me judgmental.

To read Irene’s blog: http://community.todaymoms.com/_news/2009/11/02/3453446-after-having-15-abortions-motherhood-saved-her

What do you think of this story? Can you judge behavior without judging the person? And where do you draw the line?

Lighting is Everything

Every time I look in the mirror lately there seems to be something new to lament. A deepening wrinkle. A freshly emerging sunspot. A slackness to skin that was formerly taut. Have I always been so vain? Or is the very approach of the big five-oh making me just a wee bit paranoid about my appearance?


Whatever the reason, I find I have fewer and fewer of those “high five yourself in the mirror” moments these days. You know the feeling, when you get a new dress or perfect pair of pumps that make you want strut and twirl. You may not actually say so, but on some level you know you look good.


So I’m chatting with my plastic surgeon recently (O.K. not really but he’s the guy who does my Botox who happens to be a plastic surgeon). Anyhow, he passes me a hand mirror and asks if I mind if he “makes a few suggestions.” Sure I say, bracing myself. He very gently offers that I might consider an upper eyelid lift to get rid of that “tired look” and shave a few years off my apparently haggard appearance.


As he uses his thumbs to lift my drooping lids and show me what I might look like if I were fully awake, I have to admit I’m tempted. But then I remember that the reason I look tired is because I am tired. Bone tired. Everyday. All the time. There’s no surgery for that.

After stopping at the mall for a skin-tightening eye cream and a sugar-free vanilla latte, I go back to the office, pausing briefly to check my appearance in the poorly-lit bathroom. Now I look wired and tired.


My friend Helen and I discussed this very subject the other night as we sat in very flattering light admiring each other. She said she actually moves into better light for photos now that she knows what angles works for her. We joked about finding pocket lights that could be whipped out of our purses at a moment’s notice to chase away unwanted shadows and make sallow skin glow.


On the heels of that conversation, I came up with a few tips for all of us ladies of a certain age who want to avoid being blindsided by unflattering images of ourselves:


· Resist checking your reflection in windows of any kind. If you do, you will find yourself thinking things like “when did I get a double chin?” for the rest of the day.
· Avoid last minute makeup checks in rear view mirrors. Your lipstick is fine but you’re likely to find one of those long granny hairs sprouting from your chin. And you won’t have tweezers.
· Do not look at your thighs in three-way dressing room mirrors. These are sadistic trick mirrors that add pounds and cellulite where none previously existed. I can’t prove it but just go with me on this.
· When plucking eyebrows, skip the magnifying mirror. You will frighten yourself silly. Just make a waxing appointment – it’s easier on the psyche.


Lastly, use the purse compact judiciously. Mirrors that small are ok for looking at portions of your face, like your lips, for instance, or a lone freckle. Holding it at arms length to get a full face view tends not to be pretty.


Then again, it could just be the lighting.

TMI

Remember when there was such a thing as “polite” conversation? When people didn’t talk openly about bodily functions, extramarital liaisons, personal fetishes or unseemly addictions?

I miss those days.

I’m not superficial. I relish heart-to-heart conversations with good friends, and thanks to months of counseling, consider myself to be pretty “authentic.” I’ve worked hard to be real, transparent, approachable. Hey, my life is chronicled in a blog. But unless you are my doctor, I’m pretty sure there’s no reason you need to know what’s going on with me “down there.” If you are not my pastor, I will not be discussing my questionable late night Internet habits with you. And if you are not my husband, the specifics of what brings me to the brink are none of your business.

Apparently, not everyone feels this way. There are in fact a whole lot of people who think that when I ask how they are, I REALLY want to know. As in:

“Hey how’s it going?”

“Crappy. My husband left me for another woman, the slut. Now he won’t even pay child support. The kid’s are angry and think it’s my fault because I gained so much weight.”

Alrighty then.

Or

“Hey welcome back! How was the honeymoon?”

“Great! You know I never had an orgasm during intercourse before so I didn’t know if I could. But boy was I wrong! It was fantastic!”

Okie dokie.

Or

“How was your visit to the spa?”

“Good until after the Brazilian bikini wax –I always go Brazilian you know. Anyhow, I got an ingrown hair and man does it hurt. Have you ever heard of that?”

Can’t say that I have.

It could be argued that at least among good friends, sharing the intimate details of one’s life indicates a certain amount of bonding and trust. But casual conversation should not rival truth or dare drinking games when it comes to being candid. So the question is: when does sharing your life cross over into showing your behind? Translated: exposing waaaay too much of your personal bid-nez.

Here’s the distinction: Heartfelt communication is typically unrehearsed (meaning you haven’t said it a dozen times before and then paused to wait for a reaction). And it isn’t manipulative – it isn’t secretly attempting to elicit pity, shock, envy, or disgust. TMI, on the other hand, paints a picture in the listener’s head that proves nearly impossible to erase, even after several hot showers.

As a person who blogs about menopause, I realize the soapbox I’m on leads to a slippery slope. There is something about aging that makes you just want to share the experience with others.

A few weeks ago, my mom and I were shopping for a new mattress and the salesman was trying to get mom to buy a waterproof mattress pad. I immediately piped up, “No she doesn’t want that. They are way too hot with all that vinyl underneath.”

The salesman went on the defense and claimed the mattress pad was not hot, that no one had ever complained it was hot, and that it was specifically manufactured not to be hot.


I glared at him, the beginnings of a hot flash creeping up my neck, and snarled “Obviously the people making vinyl mattress pads are not sweaty, menopausal women.” Snap!

The poor guy actually blushed and went to busy himself with some pillows that suddenly needed restacking.

So I got the last word but broke my own rule in the process. Right then and there I made a mental note to stop using the “M” card in public. Unless I’m with very close friends of a certain age who actually want to discuss how many months it’s been since Aunt Flo showed up, I’m keeping my estrogen-challenged lips sealed.


But that's probably TMI.