Going Through the Motions Till It Sticks

I'm not in a good place right now.  It's been a complicated past couple of days and I'm feeling pretty down on myself.  I'm trying not to, but there is a lot of negative self-talk.  I can't really go into the specifics but feeling left out, feeling under-appreciated, and having to make some really difficult decisions have been the trifecta.  I haven't been in a funk like this in a long time.  I can't remember the last time.  Certainly I've had kid issues, where I worry that I'm doing a shit job raising one of my kids or I'm worried about a particular direction I fear they may be taking.  But, feeling shit about myself; it's been several years.  

I used to be particularly good at negative self-talk.  But when I turned 40 and then again 50, I stopped caring as much about what other people thought about me (or so I thought).  But then this constellation of events occurred and it has me re-evaluating my self-worth.  I know there is a bigger lesson in all of this and I'm not going to let this keep me down, but for right now at this particular moment in time, I'm going to wallow in it.  Just marinade and see where it takes me.  

I guess I have to consider, on what is my self-worth based?  Where does my identity lie?  Is it my family of origin?  My family that I created?  My extended family?  My cultural background?  My friends?  My profession?  All of these things are fleeting.  As a Christian, I know where my foundation should be, but sometimes that doesn't feel like enough.  Or maybe it doesn't feel good enough.  I want external validation.  I want to be included because if you include me then you like me.  If you don't include me then you don't like me and maybe I'm unlikeable.  Maybe there is some flaw in myself that I don't see.  Like I have poop on my shoe.  Or my breath always stinks.  Or I have a miserable personality.  Or a difficult character.  Why do I go there?  Why do I assume it's me?  Why do I take my perception of other people's perceptions of me over my own knowledge of what I know to be true about myself?  

And then, there is envy.   When people at work get acknowledged in ways that I don't.  I've never been acknowledged in the way that some of the others have.  And I want it.  I want that label.  I want that shiny title.  Because even if I know it about myself, I know deep, deep down in my craw that I'm the shit, I want someone else to give me an award that says "YOU ARE THE SHIT".  It's like when you were in high school and they gave out carnations at Valentine's Day.  Some people got a ton and some people got none.  I HATED that.  As if you're not insecure enough as it is in high school that they have to reinforce it with anonymous carnations.  It's the same in academia.  I'll never be one of the ones who gets all the accolades or all the awards.  But I know that I've impacted the lives of my learners.  Am I a cretan for wanting a certificate saying so?  I'm am embracing my insecurity right now.  Yes, damn it!  I want the certificate!  

But I guess that is what makes me, me.  That's my charm and my allure. Maybe people assume because I'm always making everyone else feel so damn good about themselves that I don't need those positive affirmations.  I'm the one you come to when you need an affirmation.  Like a well that doesn't run dry.  But I can be shallow too, people.  I need props.  What about me?  Look at me over here smiling and telling you that you are FUCKING awesome?  But I AM fucking awesome.  I literally know that I am.  Why the fuck can't all these other fools recognize it and just give me my fucking crown and sash already?  

And then there is that other thing.  The stupidly difficult decision.  The very adult and responsible and professional thing that I had to do.  The thing that was the right thing to do but might sever relationships.  Damn, if that doesn't feel like a perpetual punch in the gut with accompanying nausea and a sense of doom, then I'd suspect I have morning sickness and a giant pulmonary embolism all at the same time.  

So, it's a tough couple of days folks.  A really shitty couple of days.  But despite the bad feels, I have so much for which to be grateful.  That's the worst part of it.  Two thirds of the shit I'm lamenting don't matter at all and the other one third will have long term benefit (though I might not see it for a VERY long time or maybe ever).  I feel a little bit better writing this out.  But there isn't anyone with whom I can share this.  This isn't a FB post.  What's the saying, Fake it Till You Make It.  That's what I'm gonna be doing.  Going through the motions till it sticks.  

Captive in Captiva

I have a deep and abiding sadness.  I've just spent the past 6 days with my girl on Captiva Island in Florida.  How do your children so have your heart?  I know that this isn't her ideal vacation, to spend 7 days, captive on Captiva Island, with her mother, while all of her friends are at Seaside or Watercolor in the panhandle of Florida.  But for me, I will treasure this time with her always (just like I did when I went to NY, Boston and Philly with both boys when they were 17).  We haven't done a ton of things; a lot of sitting in the condo and watching Gilmore Girls and sitting at the beach.  Mostly, we've eaten our meals in the condo with the exception of the taco shack down at the beach.  Today we've barely spoken 2 dozen words to each other, me reading my trashy romance novel and her watching and listening to God knows what on her phone.  But even though I know she's ready to move on, I'm already mourning the end of our time together.  

When we got here on Saturday she said, "Seven whole days!  What are we going to do together for that long?"  In my mind, I thought, "seven, glorious, uninterrupted days with you."  She'd think that was creepy and pathetic.  But I truly love her company.  This damned pandemic has been a bastard for many reasons, but it has allowed me unadulterated time with the ones I love the most.  I'm sure it's age and sentimentality, but hopefully someday my children will have families of their own and feel the same way about their spouses and children.  I can think of no greater gift.  

I'm not Catholic but I think I get the whole mysticism and adoration of Mary.  Really, if you think about it, she was the ultimate mother, watching her son make the ultimate sacrifice and die on the cross.  He may have been the Savior of the world, but he was still her little boy.  And I get it when it says in Luke 2:19 that "Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart."  If she wasn't really thinking about that night in the manger or the time she lost track of him on their way home to Nazareth from Jerusalem or when he turned the water into wine the whole while she watched him carry his cross up the road to Calvary then I'd understand not reveling in her motherliness.  But she wasn't thinking about her son the Messiah.  She was just thinking about her son.  And honestly, despite the whole Gabriel and host of angels at his birth, she was just marveling at this tiny little creature to whom she'd just given birth and imagining his whole life and the multitude of possibilities he had before him.  

Isn't that what we all do (not give birth to messianic prophets who change the world, even if we think we do); have big dreams for our children.  The instant they are born (or come into our lives for those who don't become mothers through birth) our hearts expand beyond belief and we have dreams, so many dreams for these little creatures.  As my children have gotten older, I've realized that there has been death to many of my dreams for them.  And this isn't bad.  I've been able to live my life and make my choices and as my kids mature, I realize that my dreams for them aren't necessarily their dreams for them.  It's gotten easier with each successive child.  At first, I thought I was failing and I was, but not because they had different dreams for themselves. I was failing because I wasn't listening.  It's not easy to release your grasp on them and let go of the reigns.  

Being a mother has made me appreciate my own mother in ways that I never could in my teens or twenties.  Not everyone has had a mother who was sacrificial, but mine was.  At times I thought I hated her and I certainly resented her.  But until I had my own 3 children I could not understand the extent of her love for me and my brother.  I'm 52 years old and she is 73 years old and she still loves me in that same, sacrificial way.  And the same way that I yearn to spend time with my children, she yearns to spend time with me.  Sometimes she gets the dregs but she never looses hope and she is always so happy when she gets time with me (the same way I'm grateful when my kids watch Netflix with me).  

So, I've loved every minute with my girl this week.  Every boring minute, every sunburned minute, every share the same bed while I snore minute, every make her a snack and clean her plates minute. And I will treasure up these memories and I will ponder them in my heart, a heart full of gratitude for the most mundane of details and the luxury of boredom. I marvel at who she is and I pray that God always has the wind to her back so she can sail beyond her wildest dreams because she is, quite simply, the absolute, very best.  

Blankets

I was thinking about blankets the other day.  I started quilting about 6 years ago.  The obsession comes in fits and spurts.  I'll get out my sewing machine, which my mother bought for my 17 year old daughter when she was about 9 years old, and I'll convert the entire kitchen, den, and dining room into my sewing room.  My family rolls their eyes at me and tolerates the yards of fabric draped over every chair and table and looks beyond the tumbleweeds of thread that collect in the corners of the room. Blanket season usually happens for about 2-4 months every year around Christmas time.  No one knows who will become a lucky recipient of one of these treasures.  I usually get a bemused, "Thank you?" as a response to my gesture of love.  And that is exactly what it is.  It's like when a cat brings you a dead bird.  Or you go on vacation and your dog leaves a turd in your closet when you return home.  It's my offering to you and if you get one, you'd better damn-well appreciate it.  I have a running list in my head of those who are blanket-worthy.  Before I lay my head down in the hard, cold ground or my ashes are scattered to the wind, I have a few dozen more people for whom I need to cut and piece and stitch together a blanket of love. 

The reason I was thinking about blankets is I have been spending more of my waking hours online (said no one ever during the global pandemic).  The weekly update that Apple sends me to tell me how many hours/day I've clocked on my phone is obscene.  If my 17, 19 and 20 year-old children could go back to their middle-school selves they'd have a fine time screaming, "HYPOCRITE!" and casting stones at me.  I have joined more Facebook groups than a high-school senior applying to college has activities listed on their resume.  There isn't an obscure Facebook group that I'm not a fan of, and that includes quite a few groups that are dedicated to quilting and sewing.  I could never actually post anything on any of these quilting and sewing pages because all the other members are legitimate in their craft.  My stuff usually comes out looking like those Pinterest fails.  The other day one lady posted a picture of a lovely blanket she was creating for her grandchildren and her evil daughter-in-law told her that none of the 12 grandkids would appreciate the gesture.  They'd rather have some plastic crap.  She wanted to know if she should just quit or forge ahead.  I was horrified.  At 3 am in the morning, I wanted to transport through the blue screen and find that insensitive wench and tell her she wasn't worthy of her mother-in-law's time or talents.  Of course every single person on the thread told the grandmother she absolutely must make those blankets for all 12 of her grandchildren, DIL be damned!  Her grand babies would absolutely treasure her gifts, if not now, then in decades to come.  I still shake in indignity at the thought of rejecting such a self-sacrificial gift. 

But it got me to thinking about blankets and blanket making in-general.  You can go to Marshall's or Ross and buy a throw for about $9.  If you and all your friends went to every TJ Maxx-esque store in your city and cleared the shelves of blankets and throws and distributed them throughout your city, you'd go back to the store the next day and there would be just as many.  They are mass produced and multiply, seemingly, like tribbles.  You can also dish out $50-$100 for some nice, soft name brand blanket.  My point being, there is no shortage of blankets; Tuesday Morning, Wal-Mart, Costco, Krogers, Neiman Marcus; you can get them anywhere.  We have baskets of them in our TV room and about 5 or 6 are usually strewn about our Ikea Kivik sectional (the poor man's answer to Restoration Hardware's Cloud).  But I can look at every blanket and tell you where it came from more or less and can rank each one in terms of sentimentality.  When we are all home, we each have our favorite blanket and we fight over them.  When we aren't home, the dogs will get on the sofas and leave behind the evidence of their badness with their fur and stink all over the blankets.  Sometimes we'll catch our miniature schnauzer trying to make a nest in one that has fallen on the floor.  Blankets tell stories.  You just have to listen.

Think about it; the moment you exit your mother's womb, what are you wrapped in?  A blanket.  It's security.  It's love.  It's warmth.  It's family.  It's history.  Admittedly, I am a hoarder.  I hoard photos, my kids' art from pre-school, memories.  And I hoard blankets.  My grandmothers made me crocheted blankets.  My mom's mom, Abuelita Fina, made each of her 20 grandchildren a crocheted blanket and no one got to pick their yarn or their pattern, but we ALL eagerly anticipated the arrival of our blanket.  I think she used the yarn leftover at the bottom of her closet and randomly and blindly selected your colors, but it didn't matter.  It was the blanket Fina, with her gnarled, arthritic hands, created just for you.  Mine is salmon-pink and brown, kind of Baskin-Robbins colored and absolutely putrid in color but it's one of my most valued possessions.  Some of the squares are fraying and despite the fact that I could NEVER match the colors, I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to patch it together.  But, I get out that blanket (which has been stored away in the ottoman of the Kivik for safe-keeping) and years of summers at her house playing Loteria and watching Trapper John MD come flooding back into my mind.  Some of my cousins got colors that I envied, beautiful blues or reds or purples but I would have never, ever, ever even contemplated trading or grousing.  My brown and salmon blanket is mine and only mine and no one will ever have one exactly like it.  It's like a snowflake.  

My dad's mother, Grandma Dorothy, made each of my children, her great-grandchildren, a crocheted baby blanket.  If you don't think I don't get choked up thinking about my, at the time, 80 something year-old grandmother, e-mailing me to ask me about colors for the blankets then you have no soul.  She'd have turned 103 this year if she were still alive and if there is one thing that Dot loved, it was how to be technologically savvy.  She'd have been texting and sending emojis and memes with the best of them.  Those blankets she crocheted for her 3 great-grandchildren were love in action.  And they are in a box of baby treasures for each of my kids. Gramma Dorothy also taught me how to knit, not well, but it wasn't for her lack of trying.  It was 1996 and my husband and I had just returned home from our honeymoon in Cozumel and while were were scuba-diving she was having by-pass surgery, unbeknownst to me.  She had come to our wedding and apparently was having crushing sub-sternal chest pressure while on the dance floor but didn't want to bother anyone.  When she returned home after the wedding, she walked over to the fire station to tell them her symptoms and ended up with 3 by-passed arteries around her heart.  I flew up to take care of her my second week into marriage.  Part of her cardiac rehab was walking slowly through Wal-Mart, using a shopping cart to brace herself, to pick out yarn and knitting needles.  We'd sit on her sofa (she called it a davenport) and she'd patiently teach me how to knit and purl.  I've never gotten beyond a scarf (and one with all sorts of dropped stitches and imperfections at that) but when I was going through chemotherapy, I'd get out my balls of yarn (GD taught me to unravel the skeins and form them into balls) and knit my anxiety into a scarf and have a moment of gratitude for Gramma Dorothy and that week in October 1996.  

My Aunt Mary Beth also knits and sews and crochets.  I keep promising myself that someday I'll take a week and sit at her feet and take a master class from her.  She made 100s, if not 1000s, of blankets and I've been fortunate to have been gifted not only blankets, but knitted Christmas stocking for my kids and cross-stitched wall-hangings and I treasure it all.  Because a blanket or any hand-made gift is a gift from the heart.  It says, "I have spent sustained time designing and creating and crafting this gift just for you. Countless hours have been spent with the sole purpose of giving you this blanket.  Each stitch, each square, each color has significance and meaning and it has been a f$cking labor of love.  This is my heart, to you, in cloth. I might not be able to buy you a Tesla, but I can give you this shitty blanket.  Now love me!"  And it doesn't have to be a blanket.  Mine and Lee's dads are both carpenters.  Our house is filled with furniture and jewelry boxes and wood-turned bowls and ornaments and chairs made by them.  I can't even.  I can't even finish my sentence.  LOVE, people.  LOVE.  So, @Kelly with the Beginning Quilters Group (names and relationships changed for anonymity), you GO!  Don't you listen to the haters and the doubters and the naysayers.  You quilt because you love.  Your heart is big and you spread your joy one square at a time.  

Back in the High Life Again

I just dropped middle kid off at school.  Why do we, as Americans, take such pride in sending our kids off to far-away, over-priced liberal arts colleges?  I was talking to my sister about this.  Why don't we, as she suggested, send them to community college and then to the local state school?  It would be easier on the wallet and the heart.  For the price of 2 liberal arts educations we could have gone on many fancy-ass vacations and/or purchased and maintained a second home in a tropical paradise.  The third one hasn't decided where she's going to go to college.  We can only hope that she aims low.  

I had fun in Nashville with boy one and boy two.  The time between graduating from my expensive liberal arts college and sending my boys off to theirs doesn't seem like 30+ years.  If I subtract that number from my entry into college, that equals 1956.  That's crazy.  The time between 1956 to 1986 was warp years longer than the time between 1990 and 2020.  There is not equality in the differences.  In the south, we'd often say "same difference".  This is most definitely NOT the same difference.  That means that when my kids and their friends look at me and my husband they see old, irrelevant people.  I went out to bars and listened to live music and played pool and did jello shots and had questionable judgement.  I'm still that person, right?

I took son one and his friends to dinner on Thursday night.  They were the nicest group of boys (men? at ages 19-20 some might call them men) I'd ever met.  One of them asked, un-ironically, who was going to say the blessing before we ate.  They all thanked me and asked me thoughtful questions and asked how my trip, to drop son two at his school, went.  They were talking about the stock market and summer internships and fluency in second languages.  They reminisced about where they were and what they were doing when they received the first e-mail telling them their semester had been temporarily suspended and the subsequent one evicting them from their dorms for remote, virtual learning for the remainder of the semester.  Sitting in that mediterranean restaurant, I realized these kids are better than we were.  

Son two seemed melancholy prior to depositing him in his mountain retreat for the next 3+ months.  He spent 3 months away at school then 3 months back at home with his friends from high school.  As all first year college students do, he was having some buyers remorse:  "Maybe I've made the wrong decision?  Maybe I should be with all my high school friends in the college town 2 hours from home"  Secretly, my heart leapt with glee, thinking to myself, "Absolutely you should transfer straight away! As a matter-of-fact, you should never leave home at all."  Knowing this might have been the response he and I both wanted to hear, but also recognizing the irresponsibility of this statement, I did the right thing.  I told him everyone feels this way at first and he will find his people at school and his friends from home will remain his friends and get closer over time.  Then we went and spent about $500 at Walmart, Target, GameStop and Piggly Wiggly on crap for his dorm and by the time I left him, he didn't look back and he was content to be rid of me.  

We spend the first half of our life anticipating the next phase and the second half of our life reminiscing about the times we were so eager to pass by.  How could this be the same boy, boy two, who screamed every time we placed him in his car seat and begged for McDonald's just for the Happy Meal toy and required so many trips to the emergency room?  How can boy one, the one so adjusted in his second year away from home, be the same kid who cried if I was 2 minutes late to pick him up at the end of the day and who refused to get out the car in middle school until I told him I was going to call the truancy officer and who floated in the pool with me one summer night when he was 13 years old and lamented about his perceived lack of friends.  

After dropping boy 2 and visiting with boy 1, I flew to my ancestral home to visit my dad and my step-mom.  I hadn't been there in 4 and a half years.  I hadn't seen my dad and his wife in almost 2 years (cursed pandemic).  Dad picked me up at the airport and with a few wrong turns averted ("I don't make it too far from home any more and my reflexes aren't what they used to be."), we made it back to their house.  Forty-eight hours really isn't enough time.  Mostly we sat together and chatted and he showed me You-Tube videos of animals and I looked up locations he and my step-mom could get their vaccine and showed them how to put Amazon Prime on their Roku stick.  I used to marvel at how neat and orderly their house always seemed to be but there was never a bunch of kids around to f*ck it up.  I went down to his wood shop with him and looked at the wood turnings he's been working on and I cherished the orderliness of their lives. Every tool had it's own home on a peg board or in a series of PVC pipes he had constructed for his wood-turning instruments.  All the bins were labeled.  They have a rhythm and they always have and it's taken me to the age of 52 to truly appreciate it and recognize the beauty.   I demonstrated to my father the proper technique in binge-watching a series on Netflix (no, you can't just watch 2 episodes) and we played songs on his speaker and cavorted with my canine brothers.  I see my mom several times a week but this trip forced me to reevaluate the lack of frequency with which I attend to my most important relationships.  Not a minute could be spared.  My sister came over for dinner the second night and we caught up as much as we could in an hour and a half and we compared notes on raising teenagers (young adults?).  

I've always been sentimental.  I came out of the womb that way.  The cancer was a gift that reinforced certain choices.  I'm glad that my hand was forced to reevaluate and reprioritize.  Just like we didn't, our kids won't stick around forever, fancy liberal arts school or not.  I can only hope they'll want to come back and spend time with Lee and me.  It's been time well spent, this life.  I hadn't wanted to get reflective, but, as I said, that is who I am.  And if my kids don't want to come visit me, I can always get a dog, binge watch Netflix (if I can figure out how to use the remote control), finally get out my label maker and organize my life, and watch dog YouTube videos.