Archive for December, 2010
Y’all know how I feel about resolutions…
Once and for all I’m putting resolutions to rest. This year I’m going to be more resolved.
This is a stretch for me. I have adult attention deficit disorder. I get distracted easily. Oh, look at that pretty thing. What was I saying? Oh, yeah, I lack focus.
Cleaning and organizing my house? What a joke. I start folding laundry, go to put it away and see my bed isn’t made. But I really want to strip the bed and wash the sheets because I love clean sheets. So I take off the sheets, put them in the washer. On my way back from the laundry room, I notice some of Jack’s books on the floor. I pick them up. In order to put them away, I have to organize his shelves. I clear the shelves off and stack all the books and crap on the floor. I go to get a dust rag from the hall closet where I see the laundry I haven’t folded yet. I start folding laundry. The cycle repeats itself.
My writing has been a lot like my “cleaning” vicious cycle. Every year I write something to bring to the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference. That means when the conference is over in July, I start something at the end of summer to have workshopped at the conference for the following year. This is the way it’s been the last seven years. I’ve always hopped from writing project to writing project, like a frog landing on a lily pad searching for the juicy fly. It’s the reason I started the blog. I can write a 500 word post about whatever I want, post it and move on to the next topic.
I am capable of finishing longer pieces of work. I have written two and half novels. I have finished a memoir, LETTING GO: A MOTHER’S STORY, which won a San Diego Book Award this year. I had the memoir read and critiqued by an editor and have begun the process of rewriting it. But I’m resolved (Ha!) to go back to Taos this summer so I’ve started to rewrite the memoir I wrote 50,000 words for during NaNoWriMo. Are you exhausted from reading this? Yeah, me too.
That’s why in 2011 I’m going to be more resolved.
1. I’m going to finish the rewrites from the editor on LETTING GO: A MOTHER’S STORY. I’m going to send this out to agents (AGAIN!) and submit to writing contests. When the rejects come back, I’m going to send the memoir out again. The failing of the publishing industry be damned.
2. I’m going to finish reading all those books I’ve started reading. What happens is I get thirty pages into a book and then I find myself in a book store where I buy another book, start that one, buy another book…you get the picture.
3. I’m going to smile more.
4. I’m going to finish what I started. When cleaning the house or organizing a room, I’m going to finish it before I move on to the next project.
5. I’m going to hang pictures that have been leaning against the walls for years. I’m going to change up the family photos that are so old that Jack is a crawling baby (He’s seven now.) and their photos of in-laws who are no longer in-laws anymore. HELLO!!!
6. I’m going to listen to the whole CD.
7. I’m going to hug and kiss more.
8. I’m going to stop checking voicemail, email, FaceBook, etc. every five minutes when I get bored with whatever I’m doing. While writing this post, I’ve checked all these twice. Instead I’m going to finish whatever I’m working on and then go play.
9. I’m going to laugh more.
10. I’m going to pay off my credit card balance and then pay the entire amount every month.
I feel better already. Heck, I’m not even going to wait until 2011 to be more resolved. This makes me smile.
How are you going to be more resolved?
Peace.
Joy.
Happiness.
May you always be welcomed home! Merry, Merry Everyone.
“Why don’t you date?” I asked Kelly.
She’d been telling me there is no one she wanted to hang out with.
“Date?” she asked, as if I’d spoken in Swahili. “What are you talking about?”
“You know date?” I asked, imitating holding a phone to my ear. “Hi, Kelly, this is Mike. You want to go to dinner and a movie?”
“Mom, that never happens,” Kelly said. “Chivalry is dead.”
Days later this was Kelly’s status on her Facebook. This was after I’d been double teamed by both Molly and Kelly about this fact.
Once Molly stopped laughing when I brought up the subject of dating, she said, “Mom, we don’t date. We hang out with groups of friends at parties. We chill.”
“Chill?” I said. “What does that mean?”
“Never mind.”
One of the girls’ friends was more to the point, “People hook up.”
After Kelly posted, “Chivalry is dead,” she had a lot of guys and girls responding by hitting the “Like” button. I was beginning to understand this was a phenomenon of this generation. In fact, in Marie Claire there was an article about how this generation of women don’t know how to go out on dates because they have no experience.
This makes me sad. I’m thrown back to high school when Chris used to drive up to my house in the country to pick me up and take me back down to the city to go to a movie, which he paid for. I remember talking all the way down the mountain and then holding hands in the movie theatre, making out in the car and fogging up the windows. When David and I started dating we went to restaurants, drank a bottle of wine, talked over dinner, had dessert. When the check came, he’d go to pay the bill unless I offered to pay. My girls won’t have these experiences, or when they do start dating they won’t have the skills.
Listen up boys and girls, men and women, mothers and fathers, we need to resurrect chivalry. I don’t know how this “hanging out and hooking up” phenomenon happened, but we’ve got to put a stop to it. I think my generation of strong, competent working women have contributed to this. Collectively, we went out, made money, came home and fried it up in a pan. We figured out how to change a tire and pump our own gas. We opened our own doors, damn it. We didn’t need a man to do it for us. Hell, we figured out how to have babies without a man. I, for one, like having David open doors for me, change my tires, pump gas for me. I like the way he takes care of me. And I’m pretty sure he likes taking care of me. We’ve got to teach our daughters they are beautiful, intelligent girls who deserve the same. Where is the self respect of allowing boys to just hook up without the courting (that means dating for you youngsters)? There is a reason for the saying, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” So why would boys “work at it” if it’s so easy to get some of that free milk?
Who’s with me on this one? Let’s make chivalry un-dead!
P.S. I know John Mayer isn’t the poster child for resurrecting chivalry. I’m pretty sure he’s hooking up without much effort on his part (and talking about it). But I love his “Daughters” song. It has a great message.
I’ve lost my sense of humor.
I know where I misplaced it. I know this because I can go back in time when life turned serious. My funny bone is buried under family, in-law, my ex, lay offs, stress, and juggling all these in the air.
What I now know is there has been a chipping away of my sense of humor. Lately my postings are serious, and while I’ve never shied away from the deep, dark places, I’ve always had the light and levity to bring me back.
I’ve prided myself on my sense of humor. I’ve bragged to my family I’m the funny one in the family. I know the girls are cringing right now. There is nothing worse than laughing at your own jokes according to Molly and Kelly, and I’ve been guilty of going into hysterics over something I’ve said, that is when I had a sense of humor.
I’d give anything to laugh at something I’ve said, but I’d have to be funny in the first place. I’ve lost my mojo.
I get it. It’s a hard knock life. But I’m not an orphan. I’m not scrubbing toilets. I’ve got food in the cupboards. My family is happy and healthy. Get over it.
That’s it. I’m going to dig out from all of this and find my sense of humor.
The sun will come out tomorrow…
Knock, Knock…
Who’s there?
You’re sense of humor.
Now that’s funny!
Jack (Chewy), Kelly (Bear), Molly (Reeses)
“Do you know the difference between a good and bad mom?” my friend, Debra, asked. “A good mom obsesses over being late to pick up her child from school or missing a soccer game. A bad mom doesn’t give these things a second thought.”
If this is the definition of a good mom, I’m awesome. My daughters are 21 and 18, and those things I’ve done wrong over the years haunt me. On the last day of fifth grade, I forgot it was a minimum day and picked up Molly an hour late. When Kelly was in fourth grade, I made her play soccer, and in high school I insisted she stick with volleyball.
And I have obsessed over the repercussions of all the mistakes, big and small, I’ve made with my children. What ifs and second guessing my decisions have dogged me. Hell, I wrote a memoir about Molly’s ruptured appendix in second grade, the divorce that followed shortly after Molly’s hospitalization and the impact these things had on my girls. But I’m done beating myself up over the things I could have done differently and the what ifs. Instead I’m thinking about all those things I’ve done right as a mom. Here are some of them:
- Both girls graduated from high school and are going to college. Neither one of them got pregnant or had a drug addiction. In fact, they are well-adjusted, social, fun, empathetic, beautiful girls.
- Molly didn’t die from her ruptured appendix. I got her to the hospital on time.
- After the divorce, I kept the girls in the same house so they could attend the same school and be with the same friends.
I’m not as hard on myself about how I’ve mothered. And I now know what my dad means when he said, “I did the best job I could under the circumstances. And I always loved you.” I used to cringe at his explanation of how he raised me and my brother and sister, but now I get it. As a good mom, you do the best you can under the circumstances, with the tools you were given. You show your kids you are human, you make mistakes, and you apologize. Then you get on with it.
The bottom line is if you ask my kids about what kind of mom I am (the people who really matter), they’ll tell you I’m a great mom and they know how much I love them.
What have you done right as a mom? What would your kids say?
