May 1, 2013

1



Midlife Changes, Parenting, personal growth

Mom and bodies…uncomfortable and unspoken truths

I lost the battle of the flat stomach twenty-one years ago when I gave birth to my son at nineteen. Sure, I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight less than a week after giving birth, but I have been chasing the dream of the flat belly ever since and it stops now. Despite talking a good game over the years and decades, I have been involved in a dysfunctional hate-tolerate relationship with my body like too many women. This relationship is over and it’s all because of my seven year old daughter.

A few days ago, my daughter was talking to me and all of a sudden I heard her utter that word that should just be stricken from the English and any other language that it exists in…diet. My antenna went up and I asked her what she was talking about, where did she hear that word? In the end it doesn’t matter where she heard it because the truth is we live in a society that worships at the altar of thinness and I have been guilty of being a congregant at that church more times than I care to admit.

Just last week, I went out to the local tweet up and mentally spent most of my time filled with angst because the majority of the bodies present were young and thin. So I hung on a bar stool and spent most of my time talking with just a handful of people since as a 40 year old slightly overweight woman, I felt out of place.  As if I didn’t belong. Who told me that I didn’t belong? No one but I felt that I didn’t belong because my body isn’t perfect, it isn’t thin. Never mind that it is strong, healthy and limber as hell thanks to four years of yoga.

For the past few days I have been reflecting on my conversation with my daughter and wondering how many times have I subconsciously passed on the message that certain bodies are better than others even though I have been careful to never use the word diet? I think about the times my girl has suggested I wear a certain outfit because she thinks it is cute but I won’t wear it because it will accentuate that which I am not comfortable with? Too many times.

Today, I woke up thinking about the parts of my body that I adore…turns out that I love my legs. They are gorgeous and more importantly they are strong and they root me into the ground, they are my metaphorical rocks. Even this jelly belly that I loathe because it makes clothes shopping a hassle is soft and squishy and warm like a buttery corn muffin. Who doesn’t love a buttery corn muffin?

My leg

My leg

 

I won’t lie, it will take some work to truly embrace my entire physical being but just like the mental and spiritual work that I have been doing in recent years. It is time. What about you? What do you adore about your body?

April 23, 2013

0



Parenting, personal growth

Questing for a bestie…the search for a best friend

This past week was school vacation week here in New England. Between the Brother’s Evil in Boston mucking up our plans to visit the Museum of Science and that pesky job of mine turning me into an indentured servant, we really didn’t do much. However late in the week when it was clear that the seven year old was going to snap if I didn’t give her some much needed Mama-daughter time, I decided a trip to the mall was the perfect way to blow off some steam. My toes were in dire need of some TLC and the girl child had been asking if she could get her nails done too.

After we enjoyed a relaxing visit to the mall nail shop aka the McDonald’s of the nail world, we wandered around and stopped in Claire’s. Claire’s for those not in the know is an accessory shop that seems specially designed for girls 7-14 since I am pretty certain that no one over 15 years of age really shops there. Cute and completely disposable items that most of the time are a complete waste of money but I am sure if I were a little girl, I would love the place.

Of course since the idea of the mall visit was to hang out and browse, we did just that until seven found a necklace she had to have and negotiated a loan on her savings. It was a two pack necklace set designed for best friends. Tacky and cute all rolled into one…why the hell not?

2013-04-22 22.07.39

The only problem though was after buying the necklace, we had a mini crisis, and whoever would the kiddo give the other necklace to? After lamenting for some time I suggested she keep both necklaces since the truth is my daughter doesn’t have a best friend. Funny thing is neither do I. I have a small group of folks who have my back but a Sex and the City style group…nah.

So after the mini crisis over the necklace was averted I didn’t think anything of this issue of a best friend again until a few days later when the kiddo bought a new stuffie aka Miss La Fluff Fluff. A day after Miss La Fluff Fluff became a member of the BGIM household, according to the kiddo Fluff Fluff was causing her to pay less attention to Ruby the American Girl doll she has had for the past couple of years and damn it Mama…this is a crisis.

It seems that at almost 8 and in second grade, my luv, my daughter the child named after a most mighty Goddess is struggling because she wants a best friend. It’s a process and we are working through it but the past few days have brought up my own baggage around this best friend issue. Raising kids as I have learned in the past 21 years will bring up baggage even baggage we completely forgot about.

Back when BGIM was just a wee lass in Chicago, I was a pretty awkward kid. I was teased terribly by my family for “sounding white” and being bookish; needless to say I have exacted my revenge on the bulk of my extended family by growing up and forgetting that they exist. I am sure it didn’t help that I was a physically awkward kid to boot. To be honest, I never quite fit in, at least in my own head.  In elementary school, I was in a program for the performing arts. All the kids in the program were like a mini family (by the way one of the gals I knew when I was 10 is now married to the former Man Unit, so I guess we were like a family since this gal was one of the popular kids and now she is my son’s stepmother) and while we all got along, I always longed for that one best friend.

From second grade going forward every school year I would imagine myself to be best friends with this girl or that girl. Sometimes the feelings were shared and we would be like the Bobbsey twins for a spell but eventually our interests would change and the relationships would fade. I did luck out though in that many of the connections that I made in elementary school have endured over the years and many of us have reconnected thanks to Facebook. While our bonds are strong and we support each other, many of us are now spread out geographically and the day to day types of support that one thinks of with best friends is simply not possible. We are all too busy juggling all the balls in the air and trying not to drop em. So by day’s end there isn’t much to give aside from the occasional text or call unless one of us is in crisis.

Even in high school, I still wanted a best friend and instead ended up being the kid who literally got along with everyone but never quite made it to best friend status. Don’t get me wrong, I had friends but no one who was quite BFF material.

Of course running off at 18 to get married and becoming a mother at 19 pretty much killed the need/desire/whatever for a best friend but as the years have gone on, there are a handful of people who fill various roles in my life. There is one person who knows me as well as my husband and mother and knows where the bodies are buried. But we aren’t the talk on the phone, do everything together types. Our connection is forged by the fact that when shit hits the wall we are there for each other. When my mother died, this friend drove 8 hours with a newborn to come to the memorial service and literally hold me up. Afterwards, despite the fact she was nursing and needed to get back to her brand new baby she held my hand for hours at a diner as I alternately cried and chain smoked. After the dust settled from my mom’s death, we didn’t talk for two years. It’s our pattern, when life is well, we are in our own worlds but when the world blows up, we are there for one another. That said, she wasn’t in my wedding and I wasn’t in hers…nothing personal. Just didn’t work out that way. Yet when pressed, she might be the closest thing I have to a BFF but really I just have a small crew of people I love and adore and trust.  

I wasted a lot of years wanting a best friend. In my search to meet that one person who would truly get me, I have spent many years getting to know all kinds of people and looking back on it, I am thankful for that experience. By not having a special group early on in life it forced me to learn how to connect with all kinds of people, which it turns out is a useful skill. I have been blessed to have women in my life who were at times 40-50 years older than me and each and every one of them brought something special to my life and has left their imprint.

There are times when I wish I had that one BFF, who I talk to weekly if not daily. For reasons unknown to me it was not to be; but at times I think that this idea of women having one best friend or one group of best friends is a media construct. While I know women who do have those types of relationships, I know many more that do not; instead their family members, mates, siblings, and parents often play those roles.

So for my precious babe, I am just going to continue suggesting that she make as many friends as possible and don’t worry about settling on a BFF as this stage in life, it will come with time.

April 1, 2013

1



Parenting, personal growth

No maps, no guides, the final frontier of parenting…grown kids

When I was a much younger woman, nothing would piss me off faster than hearing some “older” person tell me ever so patiently that when I got older, I would get “it”. Whatever this mysterious “it” was.  It always felt patronizing to tell me that despite the fact that I was an adult, I wasn’t old enough. Funny thing is, now that I am older, many things that pissed me off as a younger adult, now make a lot of sense. Turns out those well-meaning adults, knew what they were talking about.

Lately I find myself chuckling privately when younger friends talks about their parents, because when I was a young woman, my own parents used to bug me. Why the hell was my dad always talking about me as if I were still 8 years old? I am a grown up, can’t he see that? The thing is your parents no matter how old you are and how many kids you have, will always see you through their parenting lens which means you are always 8 years old in their minds eye. It isn’t intentional, but the fact is kids grow up entirely too damn fast. One day we are wiping your asses, kissing your boo boos and providing the vocal backgrounds in floor games and then the next thing we know you are more than halfway through college and bringing your love interest home to meet us. Life is moving entirely too damn fast!

The past few days here in BGIM-land have marked the official end of an era, one that I have spent 21 years with and the ushering in of a new era and I am still just trying to catch my breath. My son, known here as college boy came home for Easter Break and brought his girlfriend home to meet me…dear ole Mom.

College boy and his girl

College boy and his girl

It was a great visit, but I admit in the quiet moments, I found myself in tears as I watched the two of them share their private jokes that couples have and watched the ease with which they operated together. This is the first time in 21 years, where I wasn’t financially responsible for my son. No trips to the store with dear ole Mom buying much needed items for the boy. Nope, thanks to the college boy’s recent tour, he financed the entire trip and even treated dear ole Mom.

My son is a man now, a man standing on his own two feet as he should and I am proud of him. Yet I find myself thinking more and more about the fact that as a society we expend a great deal of energy on our kids when they are younger but few speak about the days when our birds leave the nest. As a mother, what is my role with regards to my son? For the past 5 days, I was careful to mind my words and to be gracious, going so far to say that after 14 years, maybe it was time to finally kill our ritual sign off that started after he went to live with his dad. Maybe air kisses are no longer appropriate?

When you find yourself with an adult child, you know you still have a role but it’s murky. This is the part of the parenting road map filled with dead space and you just have to navigate it on faith that you are making the right choices. So if your parents say and do things that make you roll your eyes or make you want to scream…do me a favor. Cut them some slack.  Knowing how to relate to babies, toddlers and school-aged kids is almost easy because we have a ton of resources and guides to fall back on but once you cross that line into adulthood not just based on chronological age but by developmental markers, us parents are lost. Logically, we understand that you are adults but in our hearts and minds, you are still our precious babes.

March 14, 2013

5



Parenting, personal growth

A mama’s heart…where I pretend to do that Mama blogger thing

There are times when a Mama’s heart is so filled with emotions that it wants to explode. To choose to bring a new life into the world is to sign up for a lifetime of the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. As a Mama who straddles the line having both an adult child and a school age tyke, I am constantly amazed when my fellow parenting pals seem stunned that I still worry and parent my now 21- year-old. Of course I do; my job didn’t end when he turned 18 or 21. Like my mother before me, this parenting gig only ends when I die. Otherwise I am ride or die for life. That said, the parenting my 21- year-old gets is far different than what my 7-year-old gets.

However, today for a moment, it was a rare occurrence that for once I was speechless for both my babies. This morning started like any other, except that I had gone to bed late last night since I was up dealing with day job work. This meant that I was a tad grumpy this morning but really I am just grumpy in general in the mornings. Only this morning, I got to ride the grumpy bus and the Mama emotional bus as the Man Unit came back from taking the 7-year-old to school and solemnly announced that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny both died this morning. Our 7-year-old killed them and he was the one who called it…death to magical symbols of childhood to many.

I am sad to say that my initial reaction was less than joyous in fact it was downright pissy. But as the Man Unit explained how our girl had asked him a direct question on the matter, he had no choice but to answer in absolute truth. I am happy to say that after much discussion this afternoon and evening, the girl child is happy to still pretend because it is magical but she just wanted to know what was real or not. Besides Mama admitted that she too believes in magic, sometimes those fairies and angels do seem real.

She is my last baby; my womb will never bring forth a new life. It is bittersweet at times but it is my reality and I strive to accept it and for the most part, I do. However I want to savior each and every moment of her childhood because I know this is it for me. This stage of Mama-dom will never come again. They grow up too damn fast.

On the flip side, my son, my amazing young man, the child born out of my youth and first love is soaring and following his heart. For the past three weeks he has been touring on the road with a musician he has long looked up to. After much finagling with his college to get the time off, he set off for the west coast and has had a whirlwind experience but the best is yet to come as he does two showcases tomorrow night at the much hyped South by Southwest event in Austin, Texas.  In fact as I sat down to write this post, who sent his mama a text describing the scene? Yet another reminder that the sacred bond between mother and child, if healthy, is rarely broken. It may have its ups and downs and its growing pains but it’s always there.

So, I take a break from my crazy hazy life to actually live up to my label as a so-called “mommy” blogger and share some thoughts before I get plugged back into the matrix.  If you have kids, hold em tight and love em because the moments pass too damn quickly.

March 5, 2013

2



class, Current Events, Feminism/Womanism, Parenting

Diversity of voices, follow up to work life balance

Yesterday’s post was written on the fly, more in a fit of annoyance yet it has provoked a lot of comments and thoughts. So much that I feel the need to expand on it with a few more thoughts.

Growing up as a child of the working class, my first memories of work were that it seemed hard and dirty. Grownups went to work and came home tired and sometimes in pain. Work was a place where it seemed other grownups who were deemed more important told the masses what to do and when to do it. Looking back now, my initial assumptions about work made a lot of sense. As a kid, my father was a union fork lift operator and general hack, my grandparents both worked at plants where they stood on their feet all day but earned enough money that by the time I arrived in ’73, they were able to have a slice of the middle class pie. My grandma went to Jamaica every year, my grandpa had a big floor television, they owed their own house and they saved for retirement. Jobs like this once upon a time in America brought many people into the middle class. The downside was these were not jobs people would be doing until their 60’s or 70’s because often they were physically demanding; they were also jobs where employees had little if any autonomy.

All of my early jobs were very much like the work of my parents and grandparents, work that was either physically demanding or office work where going to the bathroom too many times could cause you to lose your job. I didn’t realize autonomy existed in the workplace until I was about 25 or so and started working at places where I had a say in my work, where being late for work was no big deal as long as I got my work done. It was about that time, I made the decision to go to college and embark upon a career and I am thankful for the choices I now have.

I now live in a world where if I decide to stay at home and work in my jammies, no one cares. Hell, as long as my staff shows up and does their jobs, I could work all the time at home. I have no boss waiting for me at the office; I see my bosses once a month at a board meeting. When my kid is sick, my days might be mildly stressed just from having a sick child but neither me nor my partner are concerned that her sick day will lead to no food on the table.  My life partner who is also a child of the working class (his Mum was a barber and father an electrician) also has work that he does from home. He hasn’t been in a traditional office in over a decade. This has allowed us to navigate the inconvenience of not having a village locally because our world of work offers us choices.

Yet I haven’t forgotten the times when I was a young divorced mother of a toddler and the only job I could get was working as a barista at a coffee shop in downtown Chicago. I worked the 5am to 1pm shift, a schedule that was untenable as a single mother and hard even when you have a partner. I didn’t last too long at that job but not before I moved on to working two four jobs every day while taking care of a small child full time…fun times…not. However those moments have continued to stay with me even though that is no longer my world.

Someone asked me yesterday how we can include more voices in the “discussions” being had about work-life balance. Well for starters, the recognition of our own class privilege would be a great place because where you are on the class spectrum determines what you find important. For the mom who works at the restaurant as a waitress, knowing that she can get shifts that allow her to be active in her kids waking hours would be a great place. Better yet, maybe we need to rethink how food service folks are compensated. In the US, most food servers are paid less than minimum wage because the assumption is that the server makes oodles of tips. Having done a few stints in my younger days as a server, I will say that can be true but the truly lucrative shifts are often the ones at odds with parenting. Too many jobs in this country are paid on an hourly wage basis which means no work, no money. Maybe we need to look at that too.

I think if we reexamined how people are paid in the US that would go a long way to starting a real dialogue on things like family leave time. Right now too many people whose livelihoods require that they be physically present are just not interested in hearing what many of us are saying because we aren’t talking the same language. (I have had this discussion with several of my child’s classmates who do work the restaurant industry as well as people who work retail)

Another thing that needs to be looked at is where are these discussions being held? On the surface many good dialogues are being held online but we and anyone interested in creating real change needs to consider that by holding these dialogues in limited settings are we creating opportunities for all voices to be heard? (Today’s Motherlode column in the NY Times is a perfect example, the people who respond to this most likely will be very similar since not everyone has time to read the Times and answer a survey) For people whose work is directed by others even down to whether or not they can go to the bathroom, they don’t have time to tweet or read blogs and start discussions. Online activism is great but for a segment of the population, they need to be reached with old fashion organizing.

In the US, a good 15% of the population is living in poverty which is defined as an income of $23,021 for a family of four and the median income is $50,054 which means that a fair number of Americans are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table as wages continue to stagnate. It also means that when people are struggling to meet their basic needs, it’s hard to look at the larger picture but for those of us who are talking and looking at ways to change things it means we need to make sure that we don’t forget these folks. I grew up as one of those folks and I don’t want to forget and I want to make sure when we are having these discussions that their voices are heard.

February 24, 2013

2



Blogging, Parenting

I am not Mommy, I am a grown woman

Dear Mommy Blogger ~

I’d like to introduce you to blah blah; blah blah is a great product that will enhance your life as a mommy, please share news about blah blah product with your readers, followers, friends and whoever else. If you need high resolution photos or more information, please contact the Blah Blah PR firm.

Sincerely,

Blah Blah Blah

PR Rep

Every single day, my inbox is filled with some variation of the above “letter”, someone asking me to take my time (which is in short supply) and promote their product. Apparently the fact that I have birthed humans and I write on this thing we call a blog puts me in a certain demographic…and I am sick and tired of it.

First off, yes I am considered a “mommy blogger” but considering that my eldest kid is now able to go out and legally buy himself a cold brew, calling me a “mommy” sounds a bit silly if you ask me. Hell, even the seven year old is moving away from “mommy”.

More importantly though, now that the act of mothering has become “commercialized” it offends my personal sensibilities that my primary identity as seen through the eyes of marketers and public relations folks has been reduced to “mothering”. Make no mistake, having become a mother at 19, the backdrop of mothering has always been a very important part of my life but just as I don’t solely base my identity on being a non-profit administrator nor is my identity based on being a mother.

Rather it is my belief that all humans play various roles at various seasons in our lives and part of being healthy is recognizing that all of these roles are part of who we are as a whole. In my case, I am a mother, partner, lover, worker, boss, sister, daughter, friend, writer and the list goes on. Sometimes I wear all these hats at one time and sometimes, I wear them as needed.

Lately, my mothering hat has had a little less wear as I navigate the world of my son coming into his own as a young man. He is involved in his first serious adult relationship (he is bringing her home to meet me soon), he moved out of his dorm and into his first apartment, he is going on tour and will even being doing a showcase at South by Southwest in a few weeks. Yet the last string that connected us in a mom-child relationship was severed when he told me to use the money he receives to live on to instead help my ailing Dad who is currently without an income. That means at 21 he is truly on his own and off the family payroll as I call it. As a mother and parent that is a huge milestone, one that is both joyous and bittersweet. Yet it is part of raising kids, they need to stand on their own and our relationship will continue to evolve as it should into an adult child and parent relationship, but it is clear our mommy relationship is over. It was a good run.

While I can’t officially hang up my mommy hat just yet, it’s clear that even at seven and a half, I am seeing the sign of change as the girl child spends more time in her lair creating art and less time hanging onto me. My, we have even started being able to sleep in, this morning I slept until 10am and this is becoming more common as Seven wakes up and occupies herself until the Man Unit and I get up.

Then again now that I am no longer playing the role of Mommy full time, all the time with no break, I can now take time for myself…to dream, to play…to just be. To find myself and to see who I have become over the years and to wear whatever hat best suits me at any given time. So, please don’t reduce me to just Mommy because Mommy is me but she is only part of me… I am a full on grown woman with a variety of interests and tastes and taking care of me as a whole is my first priority, so what products do you have for me now?

 

January 15, 2013

1



Parenting

Almost 21…

When we are thick in the midst of the day to day of raising kids, it’s easy to get mired in the daily stressors and struggles and miss the joy. Raising children is not for the faint of heart and in today’s world, it seems like there are so many things out there ready to steal the joy of raising our kids.

My own parenting journey has been long and winding and at times a bit unorthodox as I found myself in the role of non-custodial mother. A role that shifted my entire view on mothering and probably made me a stronger mother as I found myself making decisions I never would have imagined, including moving to a strange state and laying down roots in that state for the sake of my son. Yet even in the most difficult years of the parenting journey that involved many tears and much legal advice, my only goal was the well-being of my son.

The bond between mother and child when healthy despite unorthodox circumstances is never broken. But there comes a point when a mother, who will forever see her kids as her babies no matter what the chronological age of the child, must step back. A mother at a certain point must step back and let her birds fly and trust that she has given her babies the tools to navigate the world and allow them to soar or fly on their own merit. There is no greater joy to a mama though when she steps back and realizes that her babies can fly and that she is merely a bystander and safe harbor. That is the place I find myself in this evening.

My son who I often refer to in this space as the college kid is in that place. He has been home for the past ten days and I am in awe of him. He will turn 21 a few short days after I turn 40 and I marvel at the young man he has become despite the many mistakes I have made along the way. I marvel at the young man he is and that he chooses freely to allow me to be a friend, confidant and yes, his mother. He tells me that he is in awe that I was already his mother when I was almost 21 yet I am in awe of how confident he is and at his ability to stand in his own truth. For the past 48 hours, my son has literally shifted roles with me and become my helper and while its been momentarily awkward, even that shifting in roles is simply part of the cycle of life.

If your babies are younger, hold em tight and savor the moments, even the challenging ones because the time passes way too damn fast. One minute, you are trying to make it through dinner and the next minute you are meeting their girlfriend on Skype and getting ready to see them off to the airport.

January 11, 2013

1



Current Events, Parenting

Smoking hot good enough mom, where is her cover?

Now that most of this week’s posts have been thoroughly depressing, after all aging and ill parents just aren’t fun blog fodder, no matter how you spin it. Let’s get a little light and fluffy for Friday, let’s talk about Beyonce and that GQ cover. Go take a look if you have been in a cave and avoid pop culture, trust me, you want to see this.

Word on the street is that Beyonce gave birth a year ago and now look at her smoking hot body. Um, well it does look good but airbrushed, can I say that or will the bees from the beehive come and get me for talking about the queen? Seriously, she is a good looking girl, but can I just say that I am sick and fuckin tired of hearing how celebrity moms bounce back after having a baby. Dude, it’s easy to “bounce” back if for starters your body is essentially the tool of your profession. In other words you need to be thin in order to keep the shekels coming in, lest you end up begging on line  or working the fryolator.

No, really, most celeb moms have far more access to assistance than us average Jane’s, I mean private chefs, people to clean their houses, do the laundry, trainers who will come to their house and actually work out with them and the list goes on. The average non-famous mom whether she works out of the home or in the home is just struggling to keep all the balls in the air. The more kids she has, the harder it is to keep the balls in the air. Hell, for some Moms, just bathing daily and leaving the house every day is good enough.

While I have no beef with Bey, what I do have beef with is the constant pressure on women specifically Moms to be hot and to look good. I mean look at poor Jessica Simpson, that is one celeb Mom who frankly during her pregnancy and afterwards looked a hell of a lot more like us non-celeb Moms complete with stretch pants and a few extra pounds and she was absolutely trashed by the media. Because oh noes…she wasn’t uber thin, she ate…how dare she??

Becoming a mom is one of those transformative experiences; it transforms your life in every way possible even down to the very way you sleep. The gestation period is nine months and yet for too many of us we assume that weeks after birthing a brand new human we will just snap back which frankly doesn’t make much sense to me. I often tell new mothers when they start fretting about their new bodies to give themselves at least nine months to adjust and get serious about “getting their bodies back”. Personally unless you are very young or in the case of Beyonce, very rich give yourself a couple of years post baby. I won’t presume to speak for every woman but having had two kids myself, it can take a long time to get back to yourself and even then you never quite go back. How can you? Babies change you, mentally, emotionally and in some cases physically.

Let’s not even discuss the fact that if you are a little older, your body can start shifting naturally, helloooooo non-perky breasts. Have you ever seen a pair of forty year old breasts belonging to a woman who nursed a baby or two? They are beautiful, but sans a good bra, unless that woman is one of the genetically lucky ones and I am not talking about you. Her twins are no longer perky and sitting up at attention, nope, they are tired and they have stretched out a bit.

I could go on and on but I will stop while I am ahead. I won’t knock Beyonce and her hard work because she really does seem to be one hard working woman but I need the media and women’s magazines to stop telling me and millions of women like me that if I do XYZ that I too can have a body like Bey’s. No, I won’t. The only way I am ever getting a body like Bey’s or even anything in that neighborhood is to give up my paying job and spend 8 hours a day working out. Even then I would still need my own personal chef to come in and make my daily, low calorie gruel taste good. Yeah, like I am going to do that. For most of us if we hit the gym or in my case yoga studio 3-4 times a week we are doing good enough. So where is the cover for the smoking hot “good-enough” mom? Oh, it’s just in my head…oh well. Happy Happy Friday!

 

 

 

January 7, 2013

0



Midlife Changes, Parenting

The end of a chapter

I have been physically capable of becoming a mother for the past twenty-five years, in that time I have been blessed to bring forth two new lives and it’s been a joy. Despite the ups and downs of mothering, to quote Maya Angelou “I wouldn’t take nothing for my journey”. However that chapter in my life is over, done, never to be seen again and it’s exciting.

My kids are exactly thirteen years apart in age and more times than I care to share, I have fielded nosy questions from well-meaning people who assume that my daughter’s earth side arrival was an accident. The funny thing is she was quite planned, I knew that I needed to have some distance between my kids in part so that I could do some much needed growing up and finding myself. It also seems the universe knew that I would need a large reserve of patience to handle my daughter’s larger than life personality.

When our daughter arrived, for several years afterwards I assumed I would eventually add a third child, one who would be closer in age to my daughter. Yet as the years have gone by, the truth is neither I nor the Man Unit have had serious interest in adding another child. I would get what I called the occasional uterus twinges when I saw a baby, but they were just that…twinges. My girl was and is a high spirited child who at times could test the patience of both Jesus and the Buddha. However her spirit is what makes her our special ray of sunshine in a family in introverts with extroverted tendencies. She forces me daily to get out of my own head which is a good thing.

This weekend though with the arrival of the college kid, after a few discussions about my son’s future plans which includes another tour for his music and a possible semester abroad. It hit me that I am done with babies. I have no interest in being pregnant, dealing with diapers or giving up sleep, now that I have again tasted the sweetness of sleeping late on weekends. I am reminded that for all the deliciousness of babies (is there anything sweeter smelling than a baby and baby’s breath?”) I am entering a stage in my life and the life of my partnership where being selfish is possible; where I can realistically juggle not only my needs but my wants as well as the wants and needs of my children. I take this as yet another sign that I am mentally and emotionally finished with the baby days.

So while I am filled with joy at the start of a new chapter, there is a certain sadness when a season in our lives ends even when we make the choice to end it. However like much of life, it will pass.

December 14, 2012

4



Parenting

Oh my! A crush and it isn’t mine

I grew up in a rather rigid and fairly authoritarian household. While my mother would eventually became my dearest friend that transition didn’t happen until after I had reached adulthood and had left the house. In my family, my dad was the boss and we all knew it. My father was one of sixteen kids born to sharecroppers in rural Arkansas who came of age during the civil rights movement. His was a life that did not inspire warm fuzzies and as a result as his eldest child, the parenting that I received was not particularly warm or fuzzy.

I have always hated the blame the parent’s line of thought that some are comfortable with, but I have never doubted that some of the issues that I have with anxiety were rooted in the fact that as a child I never felt I could just say what I wanted or needed to say. Hell, even at eighteen when I ran off and got married on a whim it took me two months to get the courage to actually tell my parents what I had done. You would think that by that stage of life I would feel comfortable saying what I needed to say…nope, not at all.

The past two decades have required a lot of work on my part to learn that is it absolutely okay to speak up in fact it is a necessity. However even at nineteen when my first child was born, I knew that I always wanted any child of mine to feel that they could always talk to me, no matter what. My eldest is now twenty and so far, it seems that he does indeed know he can talk to me, no matter what. He knows that if his own melancholy runs deep at 2am, I am available albeit a tad groggy, but no matter what, I will listen to him and his truth.

I realized tonight that my daughter aka the seven year old may be learning that too. With my daughter I intentionally have chosen a style of parenting that from the outside can look at times a tad lenient aka “gee, that kid is spoiled”. Some of the worse arguments the man unit and I have ever had, have been over my style of parenting but I think that our kids are our guides and I have always felt that she needed this style of parenting.

Tonight while getting ready for bed, she shared with me that she has a crush on a boy. Yep, we got our first crush! I am less concerned about the crush since I was about the same age when I had my first crush and more interested in the fact that at seven, she felt and knew that it was okay to share that with me. I still remember my first crush and I can assure you, I didn’t tell my mother in fact I cannot even imagine telling either of my parents such things at seven.

I was working late tonight so she actually told the man unit first and then told me and I have to say it’s alright by me. Granted she says the object of her affection is one of the “bad” boys, which as she explained means he gets in trouble a bit in class. Sadly she says the object of her affection doesn’t like her but isn’t it always that way? So I sit here tonight happy knowing that while I don’t do too many things right in this world, I might be doing half okay at this parenting thing. As long as my kids know that I am always here to support them and they feel comfortable coming to me, then I am rock star no matter what the world says.